Under the Trump administration, federal investment in space infrastructure and spaceports including the one on Kodiak Island, has taken off within the last two years. On Aug. 28, one of President Donald Trump’s latest space related actions was to create a U.S. Space Academy. Here he is during the announcement ceremony at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, broadcast by the Financial Express on Youtube:
“In 2016 the United States of America and our government, private sector, launched just 22 rockets into orbit combined," President Trump said. "And last year [2025] we conducted nearly 200 orbital launches, and that number will continue to grow very, very rapidly.”
Prior to that, he signed a Presidential Memorandum on Aug. 20 to, in part, achieve more than a thousand commercial launches annually in the U.S. by 2030, and 10,000 launches annually by 2035 according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Last year in May, Trump announced his plans for a Golden Dome missile defense system, which could cost $1.2 trillion according to some estimates and has received roughly $24 billion appropriated by Congress thus far.
And all this investment in space exploration, rocket launches and missile defense is being carried out at only a handful of spaceports around the country; Cape Canaveral in Florida, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, and the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska in Kodiak. SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas is an orbital launch site, but it is only launching SpaceX rockets at this time and just achieved its first orbital launch on Sept. 28.
“We've also spent a lot of time on the road for the last two years talking to the world that we're here, and we just went big on the map," said John Oberst, the CEO and president of Alaska Aerospace Corporation.
The corporation owns and operates the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska on Kodiak Island, known locally as the spaceport near Narrow Cape or the Kodiak Launch Complex.
This spaceport is the only active vertical launch site in the country that’s not located on a federal facility. Vertical launches involve pads and blasting rockets straight up into orbit or sub-orbit, whereas horizontal launches use airplanes taking off from a runway to launch rockets.
With the federal government’s increased emphasis on missile defense, Kodiak’s spaceport stands to become much busier in the months and years ahead.
But that comes with risks to the environment, especially when rockets fail to launch or experience malfunctions, referred to in the industry as anomalies, and explode over land or water, scattering debris. That’s happened several times in the spaceport’s roughly 30-year history, most recently in July of 2024 when ABL Space Systems’ failed rocket test resulted in a spill of 1,800 gallons of aviation fuel.
Kodiak resident and local spaceport watchdog Carolyn Heitman said she obtained reports from the state that showed the contamination went down to the water line.
“They had to dig pretty deep and it was outside the area, on the cliff side. I mean, it was all over," she said. "It took them I think six months to finally fill up the vans, and then they shipped them. They have a place in Washington State where they ship the contaminated soil.”
Oberst told KMXT via email that the corporation sent all of the contaminated soil, 564 cubic yards of sandstone bedrock, to a landfill called WM’s Columbia Ridge in Arlington, Oregon for disposal. And more than 20,000 gallons of a water/fuel mixture from the spill were also treated by the Republic Services in Anchorage.
All told, the Alaska Aerospace Corporation spent $1.6 million on cleanup and removal— a process that took ten months. The total cost for that process and to clean up ABL’s crashed rocket in 2023 exceeded $3 million according to the corporation.
Despite these setbacks, there’s still growing interest in the corporation, which Oberst said now includes a variety of commercial and government entities around the country, even from other countries like the United Kingdom.
“The world knows we're here," he said. "The United States knows we're here, and I'm not talking just the DOW or whatever you want to call it today. I’m not talking that. NASA is interested in us. So, from a science perspective as well, we're becoming better known.”
But so far in its history, the majority of Kodiak spaceport’s 35 total launches have been military. Military contracts and launches connected with the Kodiak spaceport date back to the 1990s when the Alaska Aerospace Corporation was first set up. The corporation is 35 years old as of this year. The first launch from the then Kodiak Launch Complex was a suborbital rocket sent up by the U.S. Air Force in 1998.
Notable government launches on Kodiak Island since then have included a Missile Defense Agency multi-year contract that started in 2017, the 2019 testing of Israel’s anti-ballistic missile system for its Iron Dome missile defense system, and the most recent launch at the spaceport in August of 2025, which was believed to be a hypersonic missile test conducted by the U.S. Army. That launch was not announced to the public in advance and very little information about it was shared in general. The Alaska Aerospace Corporation did not confirm publicly what the purpose or nature of the launch was other than saying it was a “successful government rocket launch”.
And the Army, specifically the Missile Defense Agency, is coming back to Kodiak Island. On Jan. 9 the U.S. Army announced a $28 million contract with Alaska Aerospace for test range services over a five-year period at the spaceport. A spokesperson for the U.S. Army, Lt. Darrell Ames, said via email that the spaceport will support, “flight-test range planning and execution for the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon and Mid-Range Capability programs.”
That military backing, plus millions of dollars in federal funding for infrastructure, and a recently announced contract to host government launches with Rocket Lab, a California-based private space company rivaling Space X, has put the Alaska Aerospace Corporation in a prime financial position. The Rocket Lab contract envisions at least 12 launches, up to 18 by the end of 2028, from the Kodiak spaceport for missile defense testing, according to a company spokesperson, Murielle Baker.
Oberst has also applied for a license change with the Federal Aviation Administration to be able to launch up to 36 times per year, which is four times the amount the spaceport is currently licensed for. Since July, 2024, the spaceport has only seen one successful launch, in August of 2025, despite currently being licensed for nine annually by the FAA.
According to corporation documents shared during its Aug. 28 board meeting in Kodiak, the Alaska Aerospace Corporation brought in more revenue, roughly $30 million, in the last fiscal year than it has since 2007, back when the state was still contributing funding to AAC.
Oberst said roughly 75% of the corporation’s funding comes from the federal government, the vast majority of which goes toward the spaceport.
“You’re looking at three-quarters of the monies that we spend are spent here on Kodiak. And three-quarters of our revenue are federal," he said.
Funding the Alaska Aerospace Corporation was awarded in 2026 alone:
$28 million for a five-year-contract with the U.S. Army for “test-range support services in Alaska”, awarded on Jan. 9.
$22 million from the $45.5 that was awarded to Alaska Aerospace and Virginia Spaceport Authority to improve and expand launch capabilities at Narrow Cape spaceport on Kodiak Island, announced on Feb. 3.
$266 million contract between Rocket Lab and U.S. Air Force/Space Force, roughly 10% of that will go to Alaska Aerospace for suborbital launches at Narrow Cape spaceport on Kodiak Island according to CEO and President John Oberst. That contract was announced on July 21.
How is the money being spent? Mainly to update and expand infrastructure at the spaceport. $22 million is being used to upgrade the roughly 30-year-old payload processing facility according to Oberst. For example, the two launch pads being built for Rocket Lab are being paid for by the federal government. Oberst said during a live call-in show on KMXT on Sept. 22 that the money to pay for the new pads is separate from the $266 million contract the U.S. Air Force awarded to Rocket Lab to do missile defense testing.
“We’ll get a percentage of that, and it’s usually less than 10% of a bill like that, that comes to the actual spaceport," Obesrt said. "But we’ll also have other contracts. You know, the pads are one, and that benefits us, and it benefits the local community by building out at the spaceport. And then we’re going to have some separate logistics contracts with the Air Force to bring material in for Rocket Lab.”
Oberst did not give an exact dollar amount for the cost of the two new launch pads. The first one, which is dedicated to Rocket Lab and part of what the company calls its Launch Complex 4, is expected to be completed by January of 2027.
Construction on the second pad, which Oberst said will be used by Rocket Lab but not dedicated to them alone, is set to break ground soon. As Oberst said, times are changing.
“Things are changing, and we are moving to a different paradigm where we've got stability and I believe a very bright future," he said.
But how do local residents feel about the future of the Kodiak Island spaceport? We’ll explore that in the next part of this 3-part series
Editor's note: This series is a collaboration between KMXT and Type Investigations with funding support from the Pulitzer Center.
