Astrium SAS
Guiana Centre
B.P. 810 - 97388 Kourou Cedex
French Guiana
Tel: + 33 (0) 5 94 33 79 31
Capabilities
Kourou was chosen in part
because it is at 5°3 latitude north of the Equator, which makes the
site ideal for launching a majority of satellites: It is possible to
place payloads into geostationary orbit which are about 15 to 20%
greater than comparable launchers at Cape Canaveral. Following the
first firing of a Diamant rocket by CNES (the French Space Agency) in
1970, Europe decided to use Kourou for its Europa launchers. In 1975
ESA took over the existing European facilities at the Guiana Space
Centre to build ELA-1 (the "Ensemble de Lancement Ariane", or Ariane
launch complex) for its Ariane-1, -2 and -3 launchers. For Ariane-4,
and to step up the launch rate to about 10 a year, ESA created ELA-2.
Now, Ariane-4 is over and Ariane-5 is however launched from a third
complex, ELA-3, whose facilities spread over 21 square kilometres.
"Europe's spaceport" covers 96 000 hectares, and has a workforce of
1100.
