Launching Soyuz from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) will make it possible to use French Guiana’s equatorial position to significantly increase the launcher's lift capability. After an inaugural flight at the end of 2008, Soyuz will launch communication satellites into geostationary orbit, navigation satellites forming part of the European Galileo constellation, Earth observation satellites into polar orbit, and interplanetary probes. Soyuz at the CSG, alongside the Ariane 5 heavy-lift launcher and Europe's small Vega launcher, will harmoniously complete the range of ESA launchers. Their exploitation is handled by Arianespace, which will be able to offer launch services for all types of missions.


 
On the occasion of the official opening of the Soyuz launch base, a commemorative plaque was unveiled and a stone from the Baikonur launch pad from which the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin took off in 1961 was deposited on the site.

This stone is a powerful symbol of the continuity between the Russian launch site, which saw the start of the space age with Sputnik followed by the first human spaceflight, and the setting-up of a Soyuz launch operation in French Guiana. The arrival of Soyuz marks the culmination of 40 years of space cooperation between France and Russia, a decade of industrial cooperation in the Starsem framework, and the long-standing cooperation between ESA and Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).


 
The launch base in French Guiana was officially opened on 26 February 2007 by Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General, Yannick d'Escatha, President of CNES, Jean-Yves Le Gall, Director General of Arianespace, and Anatoly Perminov, Head of Roscosmos.

Also present were French authorities and representatives of all the European and Russian entities contributing to the startup of the project.



Release date: 27 February 2007