Vandenberg Air Force Base, located at Point Arguello, Calif.about 240 km (150 mi) north of Los Angeles, was established in
1958. It is named for Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, a former Air Force chief of staff. The base served primarily for many years as an Air Force facility for test-
launching intercontinental ballistic missiles. It has also become the U.S. site for launching satellites southward over the Pacific Ocean into polar and near-polar orbits. Missions requiring such orbits are not launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., because they would involve overland flights of the launch vehicles.Vandenberg handles civilian
launches through the Western Test Range office of the Kennedy Space Center. Plans once called for occasional Space Shuttle launches from the base, but structural flaws in the launch facility plus delays resulting from the 1988 Challenger disaster put these plans on indefinite hold. Beginning in 1991, a Titan 4 launch facility at Vandenberg has been used to orbit satellites originally planned for Shuttle launching.