Guiana Space Centre

The Guiana Space Centre is a French and European spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana, France. 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 maneuver a spacecraft into an equatorial, geostationary orbit.

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. Rockets launch to the east to take advantage of the angular momentum provided by Earth's rotation.The European Space Agency, the French space agency CNES, and the commercial companies Arianespace and Azercosmos conduct…