Students from over 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. and overseas journeyed to the Land of Enchantment last week to send custom-made rockets upwards of 10,000 feet into New Mexico skies. After a stop at the Las Cruces Convention Center, those students traveled about 60 miles north through the southern New Mexico desert to an 18,000-acre site, from where teams representing those schools would launch their rockets.
That site is New Mexico's Spaceport America, the state-funded and operated facility that hosts the Spaceport America Cup each year. It's about 25 miles southeast of Truth or Consequences and sits under restricted airspace managed by White Sands Missile Range, roughly 70 miles east.
Access to that restricted airspace is one of the Spaceport's main draws for prospective tenants, said Francisco Pallares, the Spaceport's business development director. Its position nearly 5,000 feet above sea level also helps pull in companies that want to more easily send their vehicles into space, he added.
Pallares said the Spaceport's main goal is to help drive job creation in New Mexico's aerospace sector. That's done by bringing commercial tenants, which could set up full-time operations in the state, to the site and hosting events like the Spaceport America Cup. Washington state-based space exploration company Blue Origin is the lead sponsor of the cup this year.
There are six tenants at the Spaceport now — Virgin Galactic, its anchor tenant; SpinLaunch, a permanent tenant at the Spaceport's Advanced Technology Area; UP Aerospace, which operates at the Vertical Launch Area; and AeroVironment, Swift Aerospace and an undisclosed unmanned aerial vehicle company at the Horizontal Launch Area. None of those named tenants are currently headquartered in New Mexico.
The Spaceport could add two more tenants before the end of the year, Pallares said.
Click through the gallery at the top of this page to see the Spaceport up close.
The facility touts over 400 launches since 2012, with most coming from student teams as part of the Spaceport America Cup. Virgin Galactic is scheduled to launch its commercial service on June 29 through a research mission with a crew from the Italian Air Force, and the space tourism company wants to eventually send paying customers into the upper reaches of the atmosphere at a cadence of one flight per month starting in August.
Those flights would be run out of Spaceport America; Virgin Galactic has also announced plans for an astronaut training campus in southern New Mexico.
The Spaceport's operations center and "Gateway to Space" building — leased to Virgin Galactic — cost upwards of $200 million to build in the early part of the 2010s, fueled by a tax hike across goods and services in Doña Ana County. Source New Mexico reported earlier this month that the Doña Ana Board of County Commissioners passed an ordinance to potentially cut its County Regional Spaceport gross receipts tax, with a public hearing set for July 11.
And last month, New Mexico's Spaceport Authority picked three firms to lead a year-long master planning project at the Spaceport through a competitive selection process. As well, the Authority recently tapped Albuquerque firm Buffalo Design Architects to lead the design and build process for a new reception center, dubbed the Spaceport Technology and Reception Center, or STARC, Source New Mexico also reported.
That facility would be the new main building at the Spaceport, its Executive Director, Scott McLaughlin, told Albuquerque Business First in February when the Authority released its request for proposals for the contract. Other upgrades are planned at the Spaceport, including new hangars in the Horizontal Launch Area and other infrastructure like road upgrades in the Vertical Launch Area.
New Mexico's Spaceport Authority issued a request for proposals in late May for environmental and archeological work needed to renew the Spaceport's reentry license with the Federal Aviation Administration. Bids are due June 27, and McLaughlin said the Spaceport hopes to secure that license later this year.
The Spaceport also has a launch site operator's license with the FAA for vertical and horizontal launches. That license is undergoing a "normal review and renewal," as well, McLaughlin said in an email to Business First.
He added that Virgin Galactic, the anchor tenant set to launch its commercial service this month, does not require a reentry license because it runs its operations at a single spaceport.
