White Sands Missile Range

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White Sands Missile Range formerly White Sands Proving Ground (1945- ) formerly Alamogordo Bombing Range ( -1945)
Part of United States Army
New Mexico, Southwestern United States
White Sands Missile Range logo
Coordinates	32°56′38″N, 106°25′10″W
Built	9 July 1945^[1]
Built by	Ordnance Corps (United States Army)^[1]
Open to the public	WSMR Museum
Controlled by	Test Center Commander]
Garrison	White Sands Missile Range Garrison
Current commander	BG Richard L. McCabe (2007- )
Commanders	Tom Berard, director (2005- ) BG Robert J. Reese ( -2005)
Occupants	NASA White Sands Test Facility AFRL Directed Energy Directorate at North Oscura Peak DoD Centers for Countermeasures^[2]
Events	Trinity (nuclear test) (1945) Private F test launch (1945)^[3] 1st US V-2 rocket test (Hermes project, 1946) STS-3 landed at White Sands Space Harbor (1982) Little Joe II Apollo program launch escape system tests at WSMR Launch Complex 36 (1936-1966)^[4]
WSMR location

White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a rocket range of almost 3,200 mi² (8 287 km²) area, the largest military installation in the United States. Along with the US Army Air Defense Center at Fort Bliss, Texas seventy miles to the south, the WSMR forms a contiguous swath of territory^[clarify] for military testing.^{[citation needed]}

The range is located in Doña Ana County, New Mexico and Otero County, New Mexico. It is mostly within the Tularosa Basin (a valley between the Organ Mountains, San Andres Mountains and the Sacramento Mountains) but it also includes the northern reaches of the Jornada del Muerto. WSMR is located on U.S. 70 between Alamogordo and Las Cruces; the highway is sometimes closed for safety reasons while tests are conducted on the missile range.^{[citation needed]}

1 Description
2 Missile and atomic testing
3 Simtel archive
4 In Popular Culture
5 References and Notes

Description

The Range gets its name from the white sands that are spread over many miles in the area. These sands are composed of gypsum crystals, which have leached out of the surrounding mountains. WSMR and its surrounding areas are home to many species of animals, including mule deer and even a few exotic animal species, such as the oryx, which have been introduced into the vast high desert environment over the years. As one might expect from the topography and climate, the missile range is also home to many species of small game, including the jackrabbit and coyote.^{[citation needed]}

The site is also featured in some works of fiction. The story of the last annexation of territory by the base was the background for the Edward Abbey novel, Fire on the Mountain. The range's desert setting was used during the filming of the 2007 film Transformers as a substitute for the Middle-Eastern nation of Qatar.^{[citation needed]}

Missile and atomic testing

On July 16, 1945, the Trinity (nuclear test), the world's first test of an atomic weapon, was conducted within what was then the boundaries of the range, and part of the Jornada del Muerto. V-2 rockets captured in Germany at the end of World War II were taken to WSPG for the Hermes project, and many German rocket scientists of Operation Paperclip worked at WSPG prior to the 1949 move to Redstone Arsenal. The El Paso Deutsche Schule and Alamogordo Deutsche Schule schools were established to teach the German children.

Space Shuttle Columbia lands in 1982 at Northup Strip (now White Sands Test Facility)

Simtel archive

The "Simtel" archive was hosted at White Sands from 1983 to 1993. This was an important early repository of shareware, freeware and public domain software available to any Internet user via anonymous FTP at wsmr-simtel20.army.mil. The host machine had an unusual file naming syntax because it was one of the last machines to run the TOPS-20 operating system rather than the VMS and Unix systems common on the Internet at that time.^{[citation needed]}

In Popular Culture

In the movie SpaceCamp, shuttle Atlantis is forced to land at WSMR.

Nearby Facilities
Holloman Air Force Base (25 mi)[1]
Spaceport America
Fort Bliss (60 mi)[2]
White Sands National Monument

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Category:White Sands Missile Range

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Category:White Sands Missile Range Museum

References and Notes

^ ^a ^b "Development of the Corporal: the embryo of the army missile program, vol. 2". Army Ballistic Missile Agency.
^ NOTE: The Center for Countermeasures (CCM), founded 1972, is a joint program of the OSD's Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E), which is itself a component of the OSD (OSD). The CCM evaluates precision guided munitions and other devices in counter- and counter-countermeasures environments.
^ Bluth, John. "Von Karman, Malina laid the groundwork for the future JPL". JPL.
^ "WSTF Community". NASA.