page_title: Guiana Space Centre
section_title: Facilities
hierarchical_section_title: Guiana Space Centre / Facilities
caption_attribution_description: Batiment d'assemblage finale (BAF) d'Ariane 5 à Kourou
context_page_description: The Guiana Space Centre is a French and European spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana, a region of France in South America. Operational since 1968, it is particularly suitable as a location for a spaceport. It fulfills the two major geographical requirements of such a site:
  It is near the equator, so that less energy is required to manoeuvre a spacecraft into an equatorial, geostationary orbit. Rockets launch to the east to take advantage of the angular momentum provided by Earth's rotation.
  It has open sea to the east, so that lower stages of rockets and debris from launch failures are unlikely to fall on human habitations.
  The European Space Agency, the French space agency CNES, and the commercial companies Arianespace and Azercosmos conduct launches from Kourou. This was the spaceport used by the ESA to send supplies to the International Space Station using the Automated Transfer Vehicle.
context_section_description: Kourou is located approximately 500 kilometres (310 mi) north of the equator, at a latitude of 5°. It is a common misconception that the main advantage of launching a rocket from the equator is the extra boost provided by the speed of the Earth's rotation. For example, the eastward boost provided by the Earth's rotation is about 463 m/s (1,035 miles per hour) at the Guiana Space Centre, as compared to about 406 m/s (908 miles per hour) at the United States east coast Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center spaceports which are at 28°27′N latitude in Florida. This means that rockets need around 60 m/s more delta-v to reach Low Earth Orbit (LEO) from Cape Canaveral, which is an insignificant disadvantage.
  In reality, the main benefit of Kourou is that the near-equatorial launch location provides an advantage for launches to low-inclination (or geostationary) Earth orbits compared to launches from spaceports at higher latitude. This is because rockets can be launched into orbits with an inclination of as low as ~6°.  The lowest inclination a rocket from Cape Canaveral could be launched to is 28.5° (the latitude of Cape Canaveral).  Inclination change burns already require significant amounts of delta-v, so needing to change inclination by 28.5° seriously affects a rocket's capability to send satellites into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).  As a result of these phenomena, similarly sized Proton and Ariane 5 rockets can send similar payloads to LEO. However, the Proton, launched from high latitudes in Russia, can only send 6,270 kg to GTO while a Kourou-launched Ariane 5 can send more than 10,000 kg to GTO. Although, the massive SpaceX Falcon Heavy makes up for the geographic disadvantage of Cape Canaveral lifting up to 26,700 kg to GTO.
caption: The final assembly building for Ariane 5
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A520", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2007:09:20 13:23:47", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Tag 0x1001": "2272", "Image Tag 0x1002": "1704", "Image ExifOffset": "266", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Auto", "Image DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1944", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3802", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "11/2", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:09:20 13:23:47", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:09:20 13:23:47", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "245/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "157/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "157/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "371/16", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1704", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2272", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "71000/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "71000/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}