Colonized by France – and thus a member of the EU – it‘s one of South America‘s wealthiest corners, with funds pouring in from Paris to promote tourism and to insure a stable base for its satellite launcher.

Up at 05.30h, short breakfast and out to the airport in little traffic. Of course the handling is a mess again and we lose another hour. Finally take-off and south-east towards French Guyana. Happy to see some white faces doing the handling and we are in the taxi in no time. If we are lucky, we can make the 13.30h tour through the Guiana Space Centre – and we do.

The tour takes almost three hours and gives a good overview. The place is huge – 270 km2. We visit the Soyuz area of the Russians which is the farthest away – 25 km each way!

After the tour we wait almost an hour for the cab we order. Hülsis!!!! Back in the hotel we jump in the pool, have a small dinner there since the chef did not show up and we are the only guests, and hit the sac pretty early – it was a long day.

In 1964 Kourou was chosen to be the site of the Centre Spatial Guyanais because it is close to the equator, is away from tropical storm tracks and earthquake zones, and has a low population density. The launch site is the only one in the world this close to the equator (five degrees), where the earth‘s spin is significantly faster than further north or south; this means that the site benefits from the „slingshot effect“, which boosts propulsion and makes launches up to 17% more entergy-efficient than those at sites further away from the equator. Since 1980 two-thirds of the world‘s commercial satellites have been launched from French Guiana.

The center is run by CNES (Centre National d‘Etudes Spatiales) in collaboration with the ESA (European Space Agency and Arianespace. Ariane 5, a heavy lift launcher, was the first rocket to take off from the center, but two more launchers, Vega (a light-lift rocket) and Soyuz (a medium-lift launcher), have recently begun service, increasing the number of liftoffs to nearly a dozen per year.