Wallops Flight Facility (WFF), located on Wallops Island, Virginia, United States, is a launch site for sounding rockets and scientific balloons. It is also used as a landing site for commercial suborbital spaceflights operated by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. WFF has launched more than 16,000 sounding rockets since 1945.
The facility includes two launch pads – Pad 0A, which is used for suborbital launches of small to medium-sized payloads on behalf of government and commercial customers; and Pad 0B, which is used primarily for research balloon launches. WFF also operates a ground station that tracks and communicates with aircraft and spacecraft in orbit, as well as a range of ancillary support facilities.
WFF is owned and operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). GSFC manages the facility on behalf of NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The mission of Wallops Flight Facility is to provide safe, reliable, cost-effective access to near-space environments for America’s science community through soundings rocket technology development; atmospheric science research; suborbital reusable spacecraft technology development; aerospace engineering education; testing new technologies in flight; developing partnerships with other federal agencies, academia, industry, international organizations; providing economic benefits to local communities through job creation and tourism dollars generated by spaceport operations.