ESA hands over keys to Soyuz launch site

Left to right: Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General, Vladimir Popovkin, Head of Roscosmos, Jean-Yves Le Gall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace, Yannick d’Escatha, President of CNES, and Victor Nikolaev, Chief Operating Officer of Starsem.

The official ceremony marking ESA’s handover of the Soyuz launch site to Arianespace took place on 7 May 2011 at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, after the site was declared ready for the first flight and the completion of a simulated launch campaign.

The ceremony opened with speeches by Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General, Jean-Yves Le Gall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace, Yannick d’Escatha, President of CNES, and Vladimir Popovkin, Head of Roscosmos. They were followed by Mr Dordain handing over the site’s ‘keys’ to Mr Le Gall.

To mark this occasion and to celebrate the recent 50th anniversary of the first man in space, a commemorative plaque and a stone from the Baikonur launch pad from which Yuri Gagarin took off in 1961 was sealed on the site.