Sandia National Laboratory, the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons lab, has a facility on the Barking Sands Missile Test Range Site. The Kauai Test Facility assembles and tests rockets and missiles, studying launching, flight, and impact characteristics. Barking Sands is a missile test facility and military communications base on the western edge of the island of Kauai. The seven mile long coastal installation is used by the Navy and Army as a ground station on the Pacific Missile Range, a military operations range that covers around 17,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean, with 42,000 square miles of airspace.