Russia's Roskosmos signed a deal on Saturday to sell more than $500 million of space rocket launchers to the France's Arianespace company for flights from French Guiana following direct talks beteen Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in St. Petersburg, Russia this past weekend.The contract between Roskosmos and Arianespace provides for a delivery of additional Russian Soyuz carriers for the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, with the sum of the contract totalling 16.6 billion roubles or over $500USD, Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov told Itar-Tass on Sunday.
“We shall have to deliver additionally ten Soyuzes for firings from the Kourou cosmodrome in French Guiana,” Perminov said, specifying that part of carriers are to be delivered by 2014; deliveries are to be made a year before a supposed launching. According to Perminov, the duration of the contract is not pegged to years, but depends on the number of firings.
Arianespace chief Jean-Yves Le Gall told Itar-Tass that it had been planned initially to make 14 blast-offs of Soyuz ST launch vehicles, but a decision was taken later on purchasing of additional ten carriers. “All in all, we plan to make 24 launches,” Le Gall added. He confirmed that the first launch of a Russian Soyuz ST from the Kourou spaceport would be made late this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment