My Space Blog

Yesterday evening, an Ariane 5 ECA launcher lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport at Kourou, in French Guiana, on its mission to place two multi-role telecommunications satellites into geostationary transfer orbits. Two auxiliary payloads were also launched during this mission.Lift-off of flight V187 took place at 23:09 CET/Paris on 12 February (22:09 UTC/GMT; 19:09 UTC-3/Kourou). The satellites were accurately injected into the correct orbits about 30 minutes later.

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There have been a lot of studies about space tourism done in Europe.  Flight International has a listing today.  Here are a couple:

Future High-Altitude Flight – an Attractive Commercial Niche? was a 12-month, €127,000 ($170,000) European Union Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) project that ended in October 2007. It concluded that a European air-launched suborbital tourism vehicle was feasible and made technical recommendations.

In 2007 the Survey of European Privately-Funded Vehicles for Commercial Human Space Flight was a €150,000 European Space Agency project that examined UK space tourism company Starchaser Industries as an example of entrepreneurial suborbital operators.

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