Socorro is a city in Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of 4,579 feet. At the 2020 census, the population was 8,707. It is the county seat of Socorro County. Socorro is located 74 miles south of Albuquerque and 146 miles north of Las Cruces. The instruments used by the LINEAR program are located at Lincoln Laboratory's Experimental Test Site on the White Sands Missile Range near Socorro, New Mexico.