The City of Melbourne is located on east central Florida's Space Coast. Melbourne is about an hour's drive south of the Kennedy Space Center, and 1-1/2 hours due east of Disney World.

The City is in the southern portion of Brevard County. Interstate-95 runs through the county from north-to-south. Access roads from the west include the Beachline Expressway (formerly the Beeline) and U.S. 192, which runs through Melbourne to the beaches.

While most of Melbourne is located on the Florida mainland, a small portion is located on a barrier island. The Indian River Lagoon separates the mainland from the island. The island is a narrow strip of land that separates the Lagoon from the Atlantic Ocean. (In prehistoric times the Lagoon was connected to the Ocean. Today, the only connection is by way of a handful of inlets, including the manmade Sebastian Inlet at the southern end of Brevard County.)

Spanning the Indian River Lagoon to connect the mainland to the barrier island are a pair of four-lane, high-rise bridges -- the Melbourne Causeway and the Eau Gallie Causeway.

The Space Coast is known as a high-tech center of the Southeast. Major employers in the Melbourne vicinity include Harris Corporation, Rockwell Collins, Florida Institute of Technology, Holmes Regional Hospital, Northrop Grumman Corporation - Surveillance and Battle Management Systems, Nuance Dictaphone Training Center, GE Transportation Systems and Rossi Electronics, Florida TODAY (Gannett) Newspaper, Brevard Community College, and the Brevard County School Board