Edwards Air Force Base

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Edwards Air Force Base is an airbase of the United States Air Force in the Antelope Valley near Lancaster, California, approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles. With its extensive slopes on the dry lake Rogers Dry Lake they gained by the executed test flights there different types of aircraft and as the landing site of the Space Shuttle worldwide fame.

The approximately 74 km ² large base is from the United States Air Force (USAF ) and NASA used which operates its Dryden Flight Research Center here. The USAF operates in its Air Force Flight Test Center ( AFFTC ) on development and testing of manned and unmanned aircraft, including its avionics. The second major instrumentality of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School is their ( Test Pilot School ).

Standard take-off and landing runway is a 4,580 -meter-long concrete runway (04 /22 ), but the completely flat and smooth bottom of the surrounding dry lake also allows landings on the entire surface. For the orientation of the pilots, a wind rose with 1220 meters (4000 feet) in diameter is deposited on the sea floor. In addition, approximately 20 different runways are marked, the longest measuring 11.920 m. The airbase was about 50 times as the default landing site for the shuttle missions. Last landed here in September 2009 as part of the Discovery mission STS -128 to the Air Force Base.

On the Edwards Air Force Base and the Birk Flight Test Center is located, which currently (as of August 2011) the test and test flight of the unmanned Global Hawk aircraft performs before they are delivered to the users.

Northwest of the Mojave Air & Space Port is located.

History

First as Muroc Army Air Field and later called Muroc Army Air Force Base, it was named after the test pilot Glen Edwards on 8 December 1949 of fatally as co-pilot of the flying wing prototype Northrop YB -49 on June 5, 1948 this place accident.