France to resume suborbital launches at French Guiana
Now that France’s space agency CNES has taken the management of its French Guiana spaceport back from the European Space Agency’s Arianespace government company, it has been moving to make the spaceport more attractive to multiple future launch customers. Previously it announced that it is offering launchpads to multiple new rocket startups. Now it has announced that has signed a contract with the French startup Optus Aerospace to reopen its closed suborbital launchpad for the first time in decades.
Officially inaugurated in 1968, the Ensemble de Lancement Fusées-Sondes (ELFS) launch complex hosted the Guiana Space Centre’s first launch on 9 April 1968, with a Véronique sounding rocket that reached an altitude of 113 kilometres. Between 1968 and 1992, more than 350 sounding rockets were launched from the facility.
On 25 November, CNES announced that it had signed a contract with Opus Aerospace to use the ELFS facility for the launch of its Mésange rocket.
In other words, under the control of a government entity, Arianespace, which also controlled all European launches for decades, the variety of launches declined. As soon as control was lifted from this government monopoly however the possibilities expanded quickly.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Now that France’s space agency CNES has taken the management of its French Guiana spaceport back from the European Space Agency’s Arianespace government company, it has been moving to make the spaceport more attractive to multiple future launch customers. Previously it announced that it is offering launchpads to multiple new rocket startups. Now it has announced that has signed a contract with the French startup Optus Aerospace to reopen its closed suborbital launchpad for the first time in decades.
Officially inaugurated in 1968, the Ensemble de Lancement Fusées-Sondes (ELFS) launch complex hosted the Guiana Space Centre’s first launch on 9 April 1968, with a Véronique sounding rocket that reached an altitude of 113 kilometres. Between 1968 and 1992, more than 350 sounding rockets were launched from the facility.
On 25 November, CNES announced that it had signed a contract with Opus Aerospace to use the ELFS facility for the launch of its Mésange rocket.
In other words, under the control of a government entity, Arianespace, which also controlled all European launches for decades, the variety of launches declined. As soon as control was lifted from this government monopoly however the possibilities expanded quickly.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“As soon as control was lifted from this government monopoly however the possibilities expanded quickly.”
This isn’t really clear, since control was actually shifted from one government entity to another.
Call Me Ishmail: What changed is that Arianespace was no longer a monopoly controlling all launches and owning all the rockets. Instead France’s space agency CNES regained control over the spaceport (that it always owned). At the same time Arianespace’s monopoly on rockets has vanished. CNES wants to encourage as many of the independent new European rocket startups to launch out of French Guiana, and rather than squelch competition it is encouraging it.
And if it doesn’t, it knows those new rocket startups will simply go elsewhere. Just take a look at Italy’s plans to resume launches from San Marco.
A near equatorial launch site is really only of use to orbital LVs anyway.
Jeff Wright,
A near-equatorial launch site is of more use to orbital LVs, but suborbital LVs are not disadvantaged in any way by launching near the Equator. And re-establishing suborbital launch activity from Kourou allows sounding rockets and other such vehicles to take advantage of infrastructure and tracking assets already in place for the benefit of orbital LVs.
For that matter, the addition of orbital launch facilities to a previously suborbital-only launch site also benefits from the same synergies. Examples would be Wallops Island (MARS) with, first, the erstwhile Orbital Sciences and, more recently, Rocket Lab, having built orbital launch facilities there. There are also one or two such examples-in-the-making in Europe.