Edwards Air Force Base - Rogers Dry Lake

Shuttle Landing at Edwards Air Force Base.

The National Park Service gives us a description of this shuttle-landing location:

"Rogers Dry Lake (also known as Muroc Dry Lake), at Edwards Air Force Base in California, has been used by the U.S. military since 1933 when a small advance party from March Field in Riverside came to design a bombing range for the Army Air Corps.

"The area proved ideal for flight, with 350 days a year of flying weather and the lake providing a ready-made emergency landing field; four years later the entire Air Corps was performing bombing and gunnery maneuvers here.

"Lakebed Runway 18 was typically the landing facility for the X-15, a hypersonic research vehicle that flew for nearly a decade at Edwards. Edwards Air Force Base also served as a support facility for flight operations of the NASA Space Shuttle Orbiter.

"NASA Space Shuttles, launched from Kennedy Space Center, have utilized Lakebed Runway 23 as a landing strip."