2011 'year of rockets' for Europe
Twenty-eleven will be the "year of launchers", says European Space Agency director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain. Europe expects to have three different rockets operating from its French Guiana spaceport in the coming months. The workhorse Ariane 5 will be joined by the Russian Soyuz vehicle and a new small launcher called Vega. At his annual Paris press conference to preview the year ahead, Mr Dordain said this represented a major change in the way Esa conducted its space activities. And he told the BBC everyone might be surprised at how complex an undertaking this would be. "For 30 years we have exploited one launcher, the best launcher in the world, Ariane - but it was one launcher," he explained. "From this year, we will exploit three launchers in parallel - Ariane, Soyuz and Vega. It will introduce some constraints because the traffic will be much heavier from [the spaceport], and I'm not so sure we've yet totally understood the constraints which ar...
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