Mud Dry Lake

 dry lake, rocket launch pad

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The Mud dry lake landing strip became one six designated emergency landing sites along the 500 mile flight path extending from Utah to Edwards AFB, California for flights of the hyper-sonic X-15 being tracked by the NASA High Range tracking stations at Beatty and Ely, Nevada. Situated on the lake bed was a runway extending 5.5 miles/4.6 miles, Runway Altitude-5,000 ft, Photo Altitude-35,000 ft.

Mud Lake was an alternate to Groom Lake which was undesirable due to national security restrictions. It became the Mud Lake Drop Zone where the X-15s were drop-launched from the B-52 for high altitude and space flights. At the time it was selected there existed a pattern of obstructions running east to west in a straight line across the center of the lake bed. These were old gunnery-bombing targets dating back to World War II.

The dry lake is now used as a launch and test range where Cloud Aerospace and Rocket Technologies launches and recovers their CloudOne, BlockII and manned spacecraft and rockets. It is also where they test and produce cubesats, sounding rockets, and rocket materials.