Caribbean Beat — March/April 2018 (#150)

DISCOVER
Next stop:
space
As space exploration grabs the attention of
today’s entrepreneurs, few people know that
one of the world’s key launch sites is located
on the doorstep of the Caribbean, in French
Guiana. The Centre Spatial Guyanais is essential
to our future in space, writes Erline Andrews
— but does it benefit ordinary Guianese?
Photography by NASA/D Stover
The James Webb Space
Telescope, due to be sent into
orbit next year, promises to
help us learn more about the
universe than we ever have
before. A successor to the famed Hubble
telescope, the JWST is one hundred times
more powerful, and will be the biggest of
its kind. Named after the influential former
head of NASA, the JWST took decades to
design, almost US$9 billion, and the effort
of a multinational team of scientists. It is
hoped the telescope’s sensitive infrared
cameras will be able to detect and
photograph galaxies, planets, and stars in
the farthest reaches of the universe.
And this extraordinary telescope —
plus other examples of the most cuttingedge
space campaigns of coming years
— will launch from what most people
might find an unlikely place: the jungle
of a sparsely populated and little known
territory of the Caribbean.
French Guiana, sandwiched between
Suriname and Brazil, is not known for
tourism — its shark-infested waters mean
beaches aren’t a draw. It’s not known for
any particular export, like bauxite from
nearby Guyana. It’s not internationally
known for any particular festival or event,
like Carnival in its neighbour Trinidad and
Tobago to the northwest.
But the French overseas department
— geographically in South America
but culturally linked to France’s other
Caribbean territories — is home to one of
the world’s most significant launch sites
for space missions.
The Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG)
— known in English as the Guiana Space
Centre — began operations in 1968 on the
outskirts of the town of Kourou. It turns
out a location still under the administration
of France, with more area covered
by forest than by cities or towns, was
ideal to develop Europe’s extraterrestrial
ambitions.
French Guiana’s position near the
equator means the earth’s rotation gives
an extra boost to rockets, saving money
because less fuel is needed. Proximity
to the ocean and large swaths of uninhabited
land remove the concern that
falling equipment could land on people or
buildings below. The area is not prone to
earthquakes or hurricanes.
The CSG’s first launch took place on
the night of 24 December, 1968, four years
after the French government decided
to establish it, explains director Didier
Faivre. “It was a very small launcher,”
he says. “But you have to imagine that
nothing existed at this time. No roads, no
harbour . . .
“To decide at the highest level in
France to put here in a remote country an
important strategic asset of French policy
was a really bold decision,” Faivre adds.
Over the past five decades, Kourou
has grown from a coastal outpost
to a thriving commercial centre,
home to the CSG’s employees. British
author Alain de Botton, writing for the
UK Independent, gave a sense of the stark
difference between the space centre and its
surroundings after he visited in 2009:
“There were three control centres, a
generating plant, barracks for a division
of the Foreign Legion, two swimming
pools, and a restaurant specialising in
the cuisine of the Languedoc,” he wrote.
“These were scattered across hectares of
marsh and jungle, generating bewildering
contrasts for visitors who might walk out
of a rocket-nozzle-actuator building and a
moment later find themselves in a section
of rainforest sheltering round-eared bats
and white-eyed parakeets, before arriving
at a propulsion facility whose corridors
were lined with Evian dispensers and
portraits of senior managers.”
The CSG is administered and funded
by the ESA, Europe’s NASA equivalent,
in partnership with the French space
agency CNES and private company
Arianespace. Its average eleven launches
each year are used mainly to send satellites
into space for commercial and governmental
purposes, like communication
and national defence. The centre has
launched more than half of the world’s
commercial satellites.
But it has also been responsible for
missions investigating what could help us
or harm us beyond earth’s atmosphere. All
five automated transfer vehicles or cargo
ships that were sent to the International
Space Station between 2008 and 2014
launched from French Guiana. Not only
did the ships take supplies to the station,
which has a crew that conducts a variety
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