Kourou, French Guiana - Guiana Space Centre (European) - postcard, 2007

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana, 2007
• Publisher: Polite / art by Vincent Fournier
• Postally used: yes
• Stamp:  Great Britain 2nd class stamp
• Postmark(s): London (Mount Pleasant) 2009 cds
• Sent to:  London N4
• Notes / condition: 

The European Space Agency (ESA), the French space agency CNES (National Centre for Space Studies), and the commercial companies Arianespace and Azercosmos conduct launches from Kourou.^[1][2][3] This was the spaceport used by the ESA to send supplies to the International Space Station using the Automated Transfer Vehicle.

The location was selected in 1964 to become the spaceport of France.^[4][5] In 1975, France offered to share Kourou with ESA.^[4][5] Commercial launches are bought also by non-European companies. ESA pays two thirds of the spaceport's annual budget and has also financed the upgrades made during the development of the Ariane launchers.

On 4 April 2017, the centre was occupied by 30 labour union leaders in the midst of the 2017 social unrest in French Guiana, but was taken back on April 24, 2017.^[6]

Kourou is located approximately 500 kilometres (310 mi) north of the equator, at a latitude of 5°. It is a common misconception^{[citation needed]} 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.^[7][8]

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 of with an inclination of ~6°. The lowest inclination a rocket from Cape Canaveral could be launched to is 34°. Inclination change burns already require significant amounts of delta-v, so needing to change inclination by 34° 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.^[9][10]

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Image may be low res for illustrative purposes - if you need a higher definition image then please contact me and I may be able to send one. No cards have been trimmed (unless stated).

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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The Guiana Space Centre or, more commonly, Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) is a French and European spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana. Operational since 1968, it is particularly suitable as a location for a spaceport as it fulfills the two major geographical requirements of such a site:

it is near the equator, so that less energy is required to maneuver a spacecraft into an equatorial, geostationary orbit, and it has open sea to the east, so that lower stages of rockets and debris from launch failures cannot fall on human habitations.