{"id":389798,"date":"2026-07-28T22:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T22:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/389798\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T22:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T22:58:07","slug":"new-mexicos-spaceport-america-has-been-launching-rockets-since-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/389798\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico’s Spaceport America Has Been Launching Rockets Since 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spaceport America<\/a>, located north of Las Cruces,\u00a0New Mexico, is almost old enough to drink. I hope they’ll celebrate with free rides, space travel is a little out of my budget.<\/p>\n

The distance from El Paso to outer space is only about 100 miles north or 150 if you go east. That’s where the 2 commercial, US space ports are located anyway.\u00a0El Paso sits between the two big dogs in the new “space race”, almost exactly the same distance from each.<\/p>\n

Which is nice because NASA is in Houston which is super far away and super humid. I’m a “dry heat” kinda astronaut.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Texas Vs. New Mexico For Space Travel<\/a><\/p>\n

When it comes to space travel, NASA was the only game in town and they only carried about military or governmental operations like spying and claiming other worlds for the USA.<\/p>\n

Anybody Can Go To Space<\/p>\n

Thanks to Spaceport America and their counterpart, Blue Origin, the little, (albeit, uber – rich), guy can visit the final frontier at will. Spaceport America had a little head start on Blue Origin and they just hit the big 2 – oh.<\/p>\n

2 decades is how long Spaceport America has been up and running … the first launch from there was in 2006 … but its origins stretch back to 1992. That’s when the Southwest Space Task Force was formed to look into whether or not a “Spaceport” could really happen.<\/p>\n

Visiting Spaceport America<\/p>\n

If you want to go to Spaceport America but don’t have “go to space” money, that’s ok – tours, special events and photo shoots can be arranged. Call\u00a0575-267-8888<\/a>\u00a0or visit their\u00a0 website to set something up. Special “fly in” events can be arranged too and any that have already been scheduled will be posted at\u00a0spaceportamericatour.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Space Flight Spoiler<\/p>\n

Space “flight” doesn’t mean you’re going to the moon, another planet or trying to find ET’s home. Space is defined by the US Air Force as “50 miles from the surface of the Earth”. All the cool stuff is much farther away so, I’d say, save your money for a trip to Cancun or one of the Metallica “no repeat” events<\/a> at The Sphere in October.<\/p>\n

El Paso\u2019s Funniest Reactions to the Airspace Balloon <\/p>\n

As details surfaced about El Paso\u2019s airspace restriction, one balloon revelation quickly became the focus of online reactions.<\/p>\n

Gallery Credit: Joanna Barba<\/p>\n

The International Space Station<\/p>\n

Initially constructed in 1998, the International Space Station (ISS) is approximately 250 miles above the earth’s surface, traveling at 17,500 mph. The ISS orbits Earth every 90 minutes and completes around 15 orbits daily.<\/p>\n

Gallery Credit: Ed Nice<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spaceport America, located north of Las Cruces,\u00a0New Mexico, is almost old enough to drink. I hope they’ll celebrate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139,143,2383,223,1632,1633],"class_list":["post-389798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-local-el-paso","tag-new-mexico","tag-news","tag-texas-regional","tag-weird-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}