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For NASA Wallops, the final frontier is the current one

16,000 successful rocket launches have taken place at the lesser-known NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Hayley Harding (Delmarva Now)

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Published: 8:50 AM EST November 19, 2018
Updated: 10:16 AM EST November 19, 2018

At some point, getting to space from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia became business as usual.

It's hard to say for sure when it became that way.

It was probably before Rocket Lab, a private aerospace company, chose Wallops to be the home of its first American Launch Complex in October.

It might have been in 2013, when the first Antares rocket launched from the facility, creating a consistent series of launches at a relatively frequent interval.

Or before that — maybe in 2006, when the US Air Force launched a Minotaur rocket from Wallops Flight Facility into space.

Maybe it was before all that.

Wallops has played a key historical role in the not-so-simple task of getting an object from the Earth to the skies across the decades, from its time as an air station for the Navy to its current standing as an innovative facility that consistently does what was unthinkable just two generations ago: It goes to space.

Antares with Cygnus cargo: Cargo capsule reaches space station

That's not to say the journey has been easy, however. To many people, Wallops is the only place on the rural Eastern Shore of Virginia for those interested in math or science, although its isolated location can make it hard to retain employees.

The facility has had more than 16,000 successful launches, but some people only know of Wallops for its failures, including a 2014 rocket that crashed back down to earth just a few seconds after liftoff.

What's more, the facility is awaiting the results of an efficiencies report looking to find overlap between Wallops and its parent agency, Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Officials say the report is not a threat to Wallops, but some people aren't so sure.

Somewhere along the line, the final frontier became the current one. The people of Wallops, through their hard work, successes and the occasional failure, have made sure of that.

Today, Wallops has full-time civil service employees as well as US Navy personnel and NOAA employees. A 2011 study from BEACON at Salisbury University (the most recent available) estimates Wallops has an annual economic impact greater than $395 million. Wallops' annual budget is about $250 million.

"Every project that comes in here tends to drive us to improve our capabilities," said Bruce Underwood, the recently retired former deputy director of the facility. "Wallops is extremely well-situated to continue to thrive."

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