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Place

Cape Canaveral

A rocket launches into the sky over Cape Canaveral, with its fiery exhaust illuminating the horizon, while the ocean waves gently lap against the sandy beach below.

A spit of barrier-island sand on Florida's Atlantic coast, used as the United States' primary launch site since 1949. Its low latitude gives rockets a useful kick from Earth's rotation, and the open ocean east of it means failed launches fall into water rather than onto people. Almost every American interplanetary mission, including both Voyagers and every Mars probe, has departed from here.

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