Hidden away in the desolate mountains of the Mojave desert, NASA has been operating an expansive space communications and research complex since almost the very beginning of the Cold War-era Space Race. The historic and isolated locale is also home to an unassuming airstrip that runs alongside a dry lakebed. It has long caught the eye of The War Zone as a particularly ideal location for a drone base, and, as it turns out, this once austere runway has been quietly transformed into exactly that. Goldstone Airport, also known by the abbreviation GTS, sits at an altitude of 3,038 feet and has a single runway that is approximately 6,000 feet long. It is situated within NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC) along Goldstone Dry Lake. The entire complex is located to the northeast of Barstow, California and the airport is approximately 13 miles northwest of the center of the U.S. Army's Fort Irwin, which oversees the nearby National Training Center, one of the service's premier training facilities. The GDSCC is itself within the bounds of Fort Irwin and the NTC. The area and its various facilities take their name from Goldstone, California, a gold-mining ghost town in the vicinity.

Imagery of Goldstone Airport that The War Zone obtained exclusively from Planet Labs shows that, at least as of Feb. 12, 2020, it had one large permanent hangar, as well as a separate ramp with a semi-permanent clamshell-type hangar and a single sunshade. What appears to be a pair of MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones are out in the open near the sunshade. It's worth noting that the imagery has a minor alignment processing error, which creates a small offset discrepancy between the stitched-together satellite images that make up the scene.

PHOTO © 2020 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

PHOTO © 2020 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION

PHOTO © 2020 PLANET LABS INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION A closeup of the main facilities at Goldstone Airport, including the large white hangar and the separate clamshell hangar and sunshade, along with the two visible MQ-1Cs. The aforementioned processing error is also very pronounced in this particular portion of the imagery.

This all makes good sense since, at present, the Army's Company B, 229th Aviation Regiment, nicknamed "The Flying Tigers," is the main unit based at Goldstone. This company is under the control of the 2916th Aviation Battalion, which is part of Fort Irwin's 916th Support Brigade.

Google Earth Goldstone Airport in 2014, prior to the Army's conversion of the site into a drone training base.

VFRMAP.com A map showing the divisions of the airspace around Goldstone Airport, Fort Irwin, and other surrounding areas. Goldstone and Irwin are both inside a restricted zone called R-2502N.

Company B has a fleet of approximately 12 MQ-1Cs and its primary mission is to operate those drones during training exercises at the National Training Center (NTC). The NTC, which first opened in 1980, encompasses an area covering more than 1,000 square miles and provides ample room for large and highly complex wargaming. These exercises typically take place before a large Army unit deploys overseas.

General Atomics A US Army MQ-1C Gray Eagle.

Space Race Origins NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC) is situated within the boundaries of Fort Irwin and the National Training Center, but the drone base within its confines is a relatively new addition. The airfield had previously supported the deep space communications site's operations. The Army began building the first space communications antenna at Goldstone, an 85-foot wide Cassegrain type, in 1958 to support the Pioneer space probe program. The service's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was in charge of the program. That same year, the United States created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which subsequently took control of the JPL and the Pioneer Deep Space Station, also known as DSS 11.

NASA A basic map of the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. Goldstone Airport is listed as "Airstrip (Military Training Area)."

By the time DSS 11 began operations, the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing. The Soviets had stunned the world in 1957 when they launched Sputnik, the first-ever man-made satellite in orbit around the Earth. The U.S. government was determined to catch up, launching the first Explorer satellite in January 1958. Between 1958 and 1960, NASA also launched 10 Pioneer space probe missions, the bulk of which were to the Moon, though one was also sent to orbit Venus. DSS 11 provided a critical link to these probes. A second wave of launches, 9 in total, one of which was destroyed in a launch failure, occurred between 1965 and 1978. These probes studied the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and general weather patterns in space. NASA only decommissioned DSS-11 in 1981 and stopped monitoring the remaining Pioneer probes altogether in 1992.

NASA Artwork depicting one of the Pioneer probes.

In the intervening years, DSS 11 also supported a wide array of other NASA space programs, including the Viking space probe and lander missions to Mars and Voyager deep space probe missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The Viking and Voyager missions were all launched in the 1970s. The Pioneer Deep Space Station also had a role in the Apollo manned missions to the Moon. Beyond Pioneer NASA operations at Goldstone also grew significantly in the decades after the construction of DSS 11 and the beginning of the Pioneer program. In 1959, the complex gained its second site, DSS 12, or Echo, which initially supported the balloon satellite communications program of the same name with another 85-foot Cassegrain antenna. The Echo antenna was also employed as a radio telescope and gave NASA its first radar imagery of Venus.

NASA A static inflation test of one of the 135-foot diameter Echo balloons at a facility in Weeksville, North Carolina in 1961. Individuals observing the test, as well as a station wagon, are visible at the bottom for scale.

In 1962, NASA built a new 85-foot antenna at the Echo site with an hour angle-declination (HA/DEC) drive system that was better suited to supporting deep space missions. The existing antenna had an azimuth-elevation drive system intended for tracking objects closer to Earth, such as the Echo balloons. The DSS 11 antenna also had an HA/DEC drive system. As a result, workers moved the azimuth-elevation drive system-equipped antenna from DSS 12 to a new site, which became known as Venus or DSS 13.

NASA HA/DEC drive system-equipped antenna at DSS 12.

NASA The antenna at DSS 13, which had originally been in place at DSS 12.