Report: Russia backing out of Christmas Island venture
Posted: Mon, Jul 1, 2002, 8:50 AM ET (1250 GMT)
Russia plans to withdraw from a project to launch Soyuz-derivitive boosters from an Australian island in favor of using the European spaceport at Kourou, Space News reported late Friday. According to the article, Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said that Russia was backing out of the Asia Pacific Space Centre (APSC), a project to launch Aurora boosters from a new spaceport on Christmas Island, an Australian island near Indonesia. Instead, Russia will agree to give Arianespace exclusive rights to launch Soyuz on commercial missions, using a launch facility Arianespace would construct at its existing spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Negotiations between Russia and ESA regarding the use of Kourou for Soyuz flights had been ongoing for many months, and ESA officially endorsed the idea earlier in June. No official announcement about these plans has been made, however. SpaceDaily published an article based on the Space News report on Sunday but retracted by Monday morning, saying it contained "false allegations" about APSC and the Christmas Island spaceport.
Russia plans to withdraw from a project to launch Soyuz-derivitive boosters from an Australian island in favor of using the European spaceport at Kourou, Space News reported late Friday. According to the article, Arianespace CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said that Russia was backing out of the Asia Pacific Space Centre (APSC), a project to launch Aurora boosters from a new spaceport on Christmas Island, an Australian island near Indonesia. Instead, Russia will agree to give Arianespace exclusive rights to launch Soyuz on commercial missions, using a launch facility Arianespace would construct at its existing spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Negotiations between Russia and ESA regarding the use of Kourou for Soyuz flights had been ongoing for many months, and ESA officially endorsed the idea earlier in June. No official announcement about these plans has been made, however. SpaceDaily published an article based on the Space News report on Sunday but retracted by Monday morning, saying it contained "false allegations" about APSC and the Christmas Island spaceport.| <<previous article | next article>> |
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