News about “Rocket City” is *ahem* taking off amid revelations that the city, better known as Huntsville, Alabama, is due to add to its already-storied cosmic legacy.
President Donald Trump announced Sept. 2 his plans to relocate the U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville – a move making Alabama’s largest city central in operations to expand U.S. military might to outer space to compete with rivals like Russia and China. In unveiling the decision, Trump even seemed to joke that Huntsville will forever be known going forward as “Rocket City” – a nickname it’s long had.
But Huntsville is far from the only locale in the United States with a – shall we say – stellar name.
From SpaceX’s “Starbase” in Texas to Florida’s “Space Coast,” here’s a closer look at four areas in the United States with well-known space monikers.
Why is Huntsville, Alabama, called ‘Rocket City?’
Huntsville is nicknamed “Rocket City” because of its role in U.S. spaceflight history, most prominently during the space-race era in the 1960s between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The city is home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, established in 1960, where the Saturn V rockets that helped propel the U.S. to the moon were primarily designed for the Apollo lunar programs. Marshall, located at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal dating back to World War II, remains operational and is integral for civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research.
Alabama’s tourism bureau bills its most popular statewide attraction as the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, located in Huntsville. Advertised as the largest space museum in the world, the center is also the official visitor center for Marshall.
Huntsville is also a major hub for defense contractors and aerospace companies, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
Where is the Space Coast in Florida?
Florida’s Space Coast, measuring 72 miles along the Atlantic Coast, has gained fame as the most active region in the United States for rocket launches.
On any given week, it’s typical for multiple commercial, civil and military spacecraft – most of them without astronauts – to take off from either NASA’s Kennedy Space Center or the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Located on the east coast of Florida on Merritt Island in Brevard County – which also happens to be home to the appropriately named coastal city Satellite Beach – the Kennedy Space Center is NASA’s primary spaceport where a majority of the space agency’s missions get off the ground.
The center manages the launches of both crewed and uncrewed spaceflights to the International Space Station and partners with commercial companies like SpaceX, which conducts its own rocket launches at the site. Most of the launches take place from the historic Launch Complex 39A – the site of NASA’s Apollo moon mission launches.
The Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is near Kennedy Space Center and Cocoa Beach in Brevard County, Florida, about an hour east of the Orlando theme parks. Though it is part of the Patrick Space Force Base, the station is also a launch site for civil NASA missions and commercial missions like SpaceX’s Starlink satellite deployments.
Where is SpaceX located in Texas? What to know about Starbase
Starbase is SpaceX’s company town built about 23 miles from Brownsville in South Texas. The site is located in Cameron County, about 180 miles south of Corpus Christi near the U.S.-Mexico border.
As the headquarters for the commercial spaceflight company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, Starbase is home to SpaceX’s rocket program and is where the vehicles are both built and often launched.
Starbase made news in May 2025 when Texas voters in Cameron County approved a measure to officially recognize the company’s headquarters as its own town, complete with a mayor and city council. The city designation has been speculated to give greater municipal control of the area to Musk, who has regularly clashed with government regulators over the red tape SpaceX has had to navigate before launches.
And in late June, Starbase officials began exercising some of that control with a vote passing a law to close several of the city’s public streets to outsiders. On June 23, the Starbase City Commission approved requests from SpaceX to install gates near four intersections that would prevent much of the public from accessing a large part of the city.
One of the most prominent operations at Starbase is the ongoing development and testing of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket. The launch vehicle, regarded as the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, stands more than 400 feet tall when fully stacked.
Starship, which most recently launched Aug. 26 for its 10th test flight, is the centerpiece of Musk’s vision of sending the first humans to Mars, and is also critical in NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon’s surface.
Why is Houston, Texas, known as ‘Space City?’
There’s a reason the phrase, “Houston, we have a problem” has become so ingrained in American pop culture.
In the 1960s, Houston became nearly synonymous with the U.S. space program, earning the nickname, “Space City,” according to NASA.
Houston is most famously known as the home of the NASA Johnson Space Center, where human spaceflight training, research and flight control for missions take place. The facility is also where activities aboard the International Space Station are coordinated, all of which have contributed to the city’s reputation as an epicenter for space exploration.
Johnson even recently got a shiny new mission evaluation room for NASA’s highly anticipated Artemis lunar missions – the agency’s first attempt to return astronauts to the moon in more than five decades.
In fact, city leaders even lobbied for Houston to be the home of U.S. Space Command due to the city’s role in the nation’s space exploration and its prominent private space sector.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: From Rocket City in Alabama to Starbase in Texas: 4 US places with stellar names
Reporting by Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY NETWORK / Florida Today
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
