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Kourou is located approximately 500 kilometres (310 mi; 270 nmi) north of the equator at a latitude of 5°. In operation since 1968, it is a suitable location for a spaceport because of its near equatorial location and open sea to the east and north.
Kourou (/ k uː ˈ r uː /; French pronunciation:) is a commune in French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France in South America. Kourou is famous for being the location of the Guiana Space Centre, the main spaceport of France and the European Space Agency (ESA). It is an administrative district in French Guiana and the main town ...
Location – Name of launch site (sometimes also province etc.) ... Guiana Space Centre, Kourou 1968– <200 777,000 kg ... Close to the equator.
The Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, is the major European spaceport, with satellite launches that benefit from the location 5 degrees north of the equator. In October 2003 the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center achieved the first Chinese human spaceflight.
The first launch to use the complex occurred on 21 October 2011, when a Soyuz ST-B launched the first two Galileo In Orbit Validation spacecraft. [2]The site's equatorial latitude allows a greater payload mass to be delivered into geosynchronous transfer orbit compared to existing Soyuz launch facilities at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
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In 1964, Kourou was chosen to be the launch site for rockets, largely due to its favourable location near the equator. The Guiana Space Centre was built and became operational in 1968. This has provided some local employment and the mainly foreign technicians, and hundreds of troops stationed in the region to prevent sabotage, bring a little ...
Its remote location in the middle of the Saharan Desert and its relative closeness to the Equator (compared with Metropolitan France) made it an attractive launch site for missiles and orbital rockets.