Paris (AFP)
The titanic construction site of the launch area of the future Ariane 6 in Kourou, in French Guiana, stopped since the start of confinement against the coronavirus, should restart in mid-May, according to the National Center for Space Studies, in charge of construction.
"We plan to return the teams to the site from mid-May, provided that the health situation continues to improve," CNES president Jean-Yves Le Gall told AFP. "Special measures" will be taken (wearing a mask, safety distances, etc.) for this recovery, which concerns around 300 people, 200 of whom returned to mainland France when the site stopped, he said.
"If our return to operation plan goes well, it will be two and a half months of stoppage of the site, and the impact on delivery should be quite low", hopes the president of CNES, in charge of the construction of the launch package called "ELA 4", with a budget of 600 million euros.
The stop of the construction site, on March 16, "did not prevent us, at the level of the design offices, from thinking about how to compress the operations so that ultimately, the delay on the launch pad is less than two month and a half ", detailed Mr. Gall.
Initially, the work for Ariane 6 had to be completed in the summer of 2020 for the start of the combined tests, then the inaugural flight at the "end of 2020" of this new European launcher, specialized in putting into orbit telecommunications satellites, d internet, and sometimes Earth observation.
For the time being, the impact of the work stoppage at Kourou on the date of the maiden flight has not been assessed. "The site in Guyana is only one element" of the development of the launcher, for which other activities had to be stopped in Europe, and it is the European Space Agency (ESA) which will take stock of the overall impact of the health crisis on the calendar, underlined Mr. Le Gall.
© 2020 AFP