The ministerial council of the European Space Agency (ESA) will endorse a license for Russia to launch Soyuz rockets from the Kourou space port (French Guiana) tentatively in March 2002, the ESA Russian office chief Alain Fournier-Sicre has reported to Interfax.
He said the ESA ministerial council, meeting on Thursday, passed a resolution on ESA development guidelines and on Space at the Service of European Citizens’ policy. The document points out that cooperation in the peaceful use of outer space is an important element of building strategic partnership between Europe and Russia. No representative of Russia’s Aviation Space Agency attended the ESA sessions that took place on Wednesday and Thursday, since Russia does not belong to the European Space Agency.
According to Fournier-Sicre, the ESA General Director was instructed to study all essential legal instruments for the ministerial council to make the final decision that would allow the launching of foreign rocket-boosters, including Russian Soyuz ones, from Kourou. Fournier-Sicre emphasized that the resolution was passed unanimously by representatives of all 15 countries making up the ESA.
“At present, the process of solving the problem of Russia’s presence at Kourou is in the document drafting stage and all chances are that the decision will be positive, but it will take some time,” said the ESA representative.
Talks with France for the use of the Kourou space port for boosting commercial satellites by Russian Soyuz rockets have been under way since early 1999. Experts say the French side is enticed by the relative cheap cost of Soyuz launches. In specialists’ estimations, boosting a satellite by a Soyuz rocket would cost $30 million compared with $80 million spent on the launch of a satellite by an Ariane-4 rocket (of the Soyuz class).
The Russian side regards the location of the space port near the equator as lucrative. A rocket launched from the equator may have its payload significantly increased through centrifugal acceleration, the so-called catapult effect, caused by the earth’s rotation.
The Kourou space port of France and the European Space Agency is situated in French Guiana (on South America’s northeastern coast). It has two launch complexes for Ariane-4 and Ariane-5 rocket boosters.
