• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Russian Space Agency, French Firm Agree to Launch Soyuz Rockets

Posted on: Monday, 11 April 2005, 18:00 CDT

The Russian Federal Space Agency and a French company have signed an agreement to build a launch pad for Russian booster rockets at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, a Russian radio station has reported. The report added that, under the agreement, two to four Soyuz boosters will be launched from the spaceport annually. The report also quoted the head of the Russian space agency as saying that the deal will allow the Russian space industry to develop production. The following is the text of the report by Russian Mayak radio on 11 April:

[Presenter] A contract to build a launch pad for Soyuz rocket boosters at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana was signed today by the head of Roskosmos [Russian Federal Space Agency], Anatoliy Perminov, and the president of the French company, Arianespace, Jean- Yves Le Gall.

The talks on using Russian Soyuz's at Kourou have been going on since May 2003. They've been difficult mostly because the European Space Agency simply couldn't find any money for the project but the funding problems have now been resolved. The total cost of the project amounts to 344m euros, of which around 130m will go directly to Russia. The first launch of a Soyuz from Kourou is scheduled for 2008.

Sergey Gololobov has the details:

[Correspondent] According to the contract, Russia is to build a Soyuz launch pad in Kourou. Moreover, the rockets themselves will also be modernized. The European Space Agency is to build the infrastructure. Roads to the future launch site are already being built in Guiana's tropical forest. Buildings are being constructed and communication lines are being laid. The European agency needs this project very much. It does not have its own medium-class booster rockets and developing them is a lengthy and expensive process. The use of Russia's Soyuz's at Kourou should be a good solution to the problem. They are extremely reliable and highly ecological since they use only paraffin and oxygen.

This project is also very attractive for our country, the head of Roskosmos, Anatoliy Perminov, said.

[Perminov] The Russian side will gain work for rocket and space industry enterprises and, obviously, additional opportunities for not simply maintaining but also developing production.

[Correspondent] The Russian side will have to resolve a range of interesting engineering problems as it builds the launch pad at Kourou. So, for example, at our cosmodromes, rockets which are already in their starting positions are serviced in the open air but the Europeans want the Soyuz's placed in a special tower in Kourou, the director-general of the design office of general machine building, (?Yuriy Barnin), said.

[Barnin] This is first of all dictated by the peculiarities of the climate and the specific nature of working with these payload. Once it's installed, a service tower will be drawn up and all further work on the rocket will be carried out under cover. Before the launch, the service tower will obviously move away and the rocket will be standing just as they do at Baykonur and Plesetsk.

At our sites, a spacecraft is assembled horizontally on an assembly platform and then the fully-assembled rocket is raised into the vertical starting position. In Guiana, the spacecraft will be assembled on a rocket that is already in the vertical starting position. So then, it is a different technology.

[Correspondent] Have they simply decided it's better that way?

[Barnin] No, this is also dictated by the peculiarities of some of their payloads which cannot be integrated into a booster rocket horizontally.

[Correspondent] Moreover, because of the proximity of Kourou spaceport to the equator, the payload of the Soyuz's will double. And, according to their parameters, they will be very close to heavy carriers, the director-general of the Progress central specialized design office in Samara, Aleksandr Kirillin, said.

[Kirillin] In terms of its medium, the Soyuz-ST rocket, which will be launched from the spaceport at Kourou, is completely different from the rockets currently being used. Both regarding its control system and regarding its telemetry, it will be adapted to the launch conditions of the spaceport at Kourou.

[Correspondent] For the time being, according to the European agency's plans, two to four Soyuz's will be launched annually from the spaceport at Kourou. And the first three contracts on launches have already been signed.

Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union

More News in this Category