Russia to Move Space Launches to Latin America

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, June 19, 2003

Russia to Move Space Launches to Latin America

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Russia hopes to start using its rockets for commercial space launches from the Kourou launch pad in French Guiana in 2006 under a deal reached with the European Space Agency, the nation's top space official said.

Russian Aerospace Agency director Yuri Koptev said Wednesday that work to modernize Kourou would begin in September and was to prepare it for launching Russian Soyuz rockets.

"Work on infrastructure and the rocket, which will undergo a thorough upgrade, is to be completed by the end of 2005, and launches will start in 2006," Koptev told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Upgrading the Kourou facility has been estimated to cost about $295 million.

Koptev said that Arianespace, the European satellite-launch services company, would cover half of the project's cost, and ESA would pay the rest of the bill. France has agreed to contribute half of ESA's share in the project, he said.

Koptev did not say how the partners would divide the proceeds from Kourou launches.

Russia has pushed for access to Kourou because its proximity to the equator would allow Russian rockets to carry heavier cargoes to higher orbits, compared with launches from the Baikonur cosmodrome, which Russia leases from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.

Objects at the equator move faster through space than things farther north or south, and the added centrifugal force gives rockets a boost into orbit.

Russia's space program has gained new importance following the Feb. 1 disaster of the space shuttle Columbia. The subsequent grounding of the U.S. shuttle fleet has left Soyuz crew capsules and Progress cargo ships as the only links to the international space station.

Source: Agencies

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