{"id":561139,"date":"2026-07-27T01:55:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T01:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/561139\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T01:55:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T01:55:26","slug":"the-physics-secrets-that-dictate-where-nasa-launches-its-rockets-from-and-why-we-dont-launch-rockets-from-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/561139\/","title":{"rendered":"The physics secrets that dictate where NASA launches its rockets from (and why we don\u2019t launch rockets from mountains)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you launch a spacecraft, you need to propel a very large, heavy object high into the air, so fast that it can overcome Earth\u2019s gravity.<\/p>\n

That takes one heck of a lot of energy \u2013 which means one heck of a lot of fuel and, hence ,one heck of a lot of money.<\/p>\n

There are three key things to consider here:<\/p>\n

The weight of the spacecraft itself
\nThe weight of its payload (crew, scientific equipment etc)
\nThe weight of the fuel you\u2019ll need to make such a journey feasible<\/p>\n

\"ACredit: ESA-S. Corvaja 2003<\/p>\n

So what does it take to launch a rocket into space \u2013 and are there some place on Earth more suitable than others?<\/p>\n

What tricks do space engineers use to launch their rockets into space more effectively.<\/p>\n

\"TheA NASA Boeing Crew Flight Test launches on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, 5 June 2024. Credit: NASA\/Joel Kowsky
\nFuel mass and payload weight \u2013\u00a0a tricky relationship<\/p>\n

The ratio between fuel mass and payload weight is determined by something called the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation \u2013 and it\u2019s a high one.<\/p>\n

For instance, NASA\u2019s Mars rover Curiosity has a mass of over 900kg (1,980lbs), of which its scientific instruments make up just 75kg (165lbs).<\/p>\n

But the total mass, at liftoff, of the Atlas V 541 rocket that took it to Mars was over 530,000kg, most of which was fuel.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe launch of NASA’s Curiosity rover from Cape Canaveral in Florida, 26 November 2011. Credit: United Launch Alliance<\/p>\n

NASA has calculated that if the same fuel-to-payload ratio applied to cars, then the biggest \u2018weekly shop\u2019 that the average family car was capable of carrying back from the supermarket would be\u2026 a single grape.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, aerospace engineers are always looking for ways to lighten the load (both literally and financially).<\/p>\n

One way of doing that, of course, is to keep the weight of your spacecraft to an absolute minimum.<\/p>\n

Another is to choose your launch site carefully, because certain launch locations can make life a little easier.<\/p>\n

Launching from altitude
\n\"LaunchingLaunching a rocket from a mountain top might seem like a good idea, but how do we get the rocket all the way up there? Credit: Pavliha \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

One obvious idea might be to launch rockets from mountain tops. After all, you\u2019re above much of Earth\u2019s atmosphere already \u2013 that\u2019s got to help, surely?<\/p>\n

Well, to some extent it does. But the direct benefits of altitude per se are negligible.<\/p>\n

Yes, if you\u2019re on top of Mt Everest you\u2019re 8.8km (5.5mi) closer to the Moon than you would be at sea level, but as the Moon is about 380,000km (240,000mi) away that really doesn\u2019t make much difference.<\/p>\n

And while Earth\u2019s gravity might be marginally less at that altitude, the real benefit to launching a rocket from a mountaintop would be the reduced atmospheric pressure (which, for technical reasons, means you can have a slightly larger outflow nozzle on your rocket engine, equating to more engine efficiency).<\/p>\n

The upshot of all this is that a rocket launched from a mountain top can carry a little more weight than one launched from sea level \u2013\u00a0and as we\u2019ve already seen, in the world of space flight, \u2018free\u2019 weight is always a good thing.<\/p>\n

However, there\u2019s a catch: mountain tops are quite hard places to reach, and the cost and logistics of building a launch site or spaceport on top of a mountain tend to far outweigh the savings in terms of fuel and payload.<\/p>\n

Launching near the equator
\n\"NASA\u2019sNASA\u2019s Artemis II Space Launch System at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA \u2013\u00a0almost as close to the equator as you can get, without leaving the USA! Credit: NASA\/Kim Shifflett<\/p>\n

Earth, as we\u2019re sure you know, is spinning on its axis, and takes 24 hours to rotate completely.<\/p>\n

That means every location on Earth has 24 hours to describe a circle and get back to where it is now, with locations close to the poles describing the smallest circle and those at the equator describing the largest.<\/p>\n

Which in turn means that, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, Earth spins fastest at the equator, and more slowly elsewhere.<\/p>\n

In fact, if you\u2019re standing at the Equator, you\u2019re already moving at a speed of 1,650km\/h relative to Earth\u2019s centre \u2013 a sizeable chunk of the 28,000km\/h or so you need to achieve to get yourself into Earth orbit.<\/p>\n

So can you give a rocket a \u2018head start\u2019 by launching it at or close to the equator?<\/p>\n

\"Boeing\u2019sBoeing\u2019s Starliner spacecraft launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 5 June 2024, marking its first crewed flight to the International Space Station. Photo by Joe Raedle\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Yes you can, is the answer to that \u2013 launching from the equator means you can either use less fuel to launch the same payload, or put more mass into space using only the same amount of fuel.<\/p>\n

But how much of an advantage that is depends where the spaceship in question is heading after you launch it.<\/p>\n

Launching from the equator brings the biggest benefits when you\u2019re putting satellites into geostationary orbit. Such satellites orbit on the equatorial plane anyway, so it makes sense to start as you mean to go on!<\/p>\n

Equatorial launches don\u2019t bring quite such an advantage if you\u2019re hoping to put something into a more inclined orbit (i.e. one that is at an angle to Earth\u2019s equatorial plane), because in such cases an equatorially-launched spacecraft will have to carry out fuel-intensive course adjustments once in-flight.<\/p>\n

And for objects being launched into polar orbit \u2013 one that traverses the two poles once in each orbit, as is the case for many weather- and climate-monitoring satellites \u2013 then an equatorial launch makes very little sense.<\/p>\n

You are in fact better off launching from as far north or south as possible.<\/p>\n

However, even if an equatorial launch does make sense for your mission, there are still other factors to consider, including logistics and cost.<\/p>\n

\"VirginVirgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket at Spaceport Cornwall. Credit: Spaceport Cornwall
\nMaking the best of your location<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re the European Space Agency or Roscosmos, for instance, then your headquarters and most of your manufacturing facilities are going to be a long, long way from the equator.<\/p>\n

And just as it might be too expensive or too difficult to transport all the personnel and hardware require to launch a rocket up a mountain, such hurdles often make equatorial launches similarly infeasible.<\/p>\n

In fact, of around 100 rocket launch sites listed on Wikipedia, only nine sit within 10\u00b0 of the equator.<\/p>\n

These include Shaba North in Zaire, the Broglio Space Centre in Kenya, Gan Island in the Maldives and Coronie in Surinam, all of which are now defunct, as well as India\u2019s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (AKA Thumba), Indonesia\u2019s LAPAN Rocket Launcher Station, Brazil\u2019s Alcantara Launch Center and Natal-Barreira do Inferno, and \u2013 perhaps most famously \u2013\u00a0the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe launch of the James Webb Space Telescope aboard Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana on 25 December 2021. Credit: Jody Amiet\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting, however, that many other launch sites do sit as close to the equator as the nation in question can manage \u2013 Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, for instance, sit at a latitude of 28\u00b0N, while China\u2019s Wenchang Space Launch Site is at a latitude 19\u00b0N and India\u2019s Satish Dhawan Space Centre sits at 13\u00b0N.<\/p>\n

At those sort of latitudes, you won\u2019t get the same sort of \u2018equatorial advantage\u2019 as you would from launching at the equator itself \u2013 but you\u2019ll still get SOME.<\/p>\n

Particularly if you do the one thing that can give any rocket launch a boost \u2013 launch with the rocket facing east.<\/p>\n

Apart from some polar-orbiting satellites, almost all rockets launch in an easterly direction, whether they\u2019re taking off from close to the equator in French Guiana, or from Roscosmos\u2019s Baikonur Cosmodrome, at a latitude of 45\u00b0N.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because Earth is spinning from west to east already \u2013 so you\u2019re effectively swimming with the tide rather than against it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you launch a spacecraft, you need to propel a very large, heavy object high into the air,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-561139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}