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  • A full-scale mock-up of a multinational 50.5 meter-high European Space Agency's (ESA) Ariane 5 rocket is lit by floodlights in an early tropical evening at the main entrance to Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guiana, South America. Glowing orange by the warm lighting, it makes an impressive model against the fading equatorial sky. Seen in scale, a lone human figure stands at the foot of the launcher that in reality, sends massive 8,000 kg payloads into orbit for a variety of communications and International Space Station purposes. Powered by Snecma-made Vulcain engines and boosted by Europropulsion solid motors, these rockets are launched from this facility on the Guiana coast. The building to the left are the CNES offices belong to the French Space Agency.
    esa_guiana23515-08-2007_1.jpg
  • Striped covers for electrical cables turn a right-angle turn to the left towards power cabinets  which are numbered 1 to 6 at the European Space Agency's Europropulsion Ariane 5 rocket Booster Integration Building. Railings ensure that pedestrians keep to the  walkways without endangering health and safety, according to EU law. Elsewhere in this giant building the boosters that propel ESA rockets into space are integrated with their payloads.
    esa_guiana22415-08-2007_1.jpg
  • Standing on weathered concrete at an old launchpad from a bygone age, space tourists stop to photograph the current Ariane 5 launchpad while on a tour of the European Space Agency at Kourou, French Guiana. They are mostly Japanese, representing their B-SAT communications satellite which is to be sent into orbit later that night alongside a US-made Hughes Corporation and Lockheed Martin technology. An American NASA space technician walks past the four Japanese as they hold cameras that record their souvenirs of a memorable day at this space facility deep in the South American rainforest. The orange bags carried by all are gas masks. Should the out of sight rocket booster explode or leak liguid propellant, dangerous fumes might overcome the visitors.
    esa_guiana09114-08-2007_1.jpg
  • In a sterile clean room, one module section of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) called Jules Verne, is under construction by technicians of an integration team at Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The ATV cargo carrier is the world's largest and most complex orbiting spacecraft and is a new series of autonomous spaceships designed to re-supply the International Space Station with replacement cargo, propellant, water and oxygen to the orbital outpost. Launched in March 2008 and self-destructed with waste during its return to earth's atmosphere that September, it delivered 4.6 tonnes of payload to the ISS, including 1,150 kg of dry cargo, 856 kg of propellant for the Russian Zvezda module, 270 kg of drinking water and 21 kg of oxygen.
    esa_guiana26916-08-2007_1.jpg
  • The writer, essayist and philosopher Alain de Botton stands in front of a mural of a Soyuz rocket of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) taking off from a mobile gantry at the European Space Agency (ESA). De Botton is in French Guiana researching his book 'The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work' published in April 2009. The illustration celebrates a future Russian mission if construction of their new facilities continues with the help of the French and other space agencies. Cosmonauts and technicians will ooccupy a purpose-built town near ESA's rocket complex. Alain de Botton (born Zurich, 1969) now lives in London. His best-selling books refer both to his own experiences and ideas- and those of artists, philosophers and thinkers. It's a style of writing that has been termed a 'philosophy of everyday life.'
    esa_guiana10814-08-2007_1.jpg
  • Hours before a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket launch, a computer monitor displays cryogenic data at the CDL3 launch centre at ESA's Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana. It shows the status of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant systems within a Vulcain engine. Stored in the launcher tanks and fed to the engine, they react chemically and expand in the engine combustion chamber then forced through the nozzle to provide the thrust that propels the vehicle into orbit. Cryogenic engines utilise propellants that are liquid under cryogenic conditions, at a temperature much lower than normal ambient conditions (-251°C for hydrogen and -184°C for oxygen). The advantage of cryogenic propellants is that they provide the highest thrust performance.
    esa_guiana05014-08-2007_1.jpg
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