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, reports Jonathan Amos from Paris for the BBC.

"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 are linked to the exploitation of three launchers instead of one," said Dordain.