Ensemble de Lancement Soyouz
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| Launch site | Guiana Space Centre | ||||||||||||
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| Short name | ELS | ||||||||||||
| Operator | Arianespace | ||||||||||||
| Launch pad(s) | One | ||||||||||||
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| Launch history | |
|---|---|
| Status | Active |
| Launches | 16 |
| First launch | 21 October 2011 Soyuz STB/Fregat-MT / Galileo IOV 1+2 |
| Last launch | 28 January 2017 Soyuz STB/Fregat-MT / Hispasat AG 1 |
| Associated rockets |
Soyuz ST |
The Ensemble de Lancement Soyouz (ELS) (in English; Soyuz Launch Complex), is a launch complex at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou/Sinnamary, French Guiana. It is used by Soyuz-ST rockets: modified versions of the Soyuz-2 optimised for launch from Kourou under Soyuz at the Guiana Space Centre programme.
The first launch to use the complex occurred on 21 October 2011, when a Soyuz ST-B launched the first two Galileo In Orbit Validation spacecraft.
The site's equatorial latitude allows a greater payload mass to be delivered into geosynchronous transfer orbit compared to existing Soyuz launch facilities at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
ELS is fifteen kilometres north-west of the launch facilities used by Ariane rockets.
It consists of a single launch pad, with a horizontal assembly and processing facility, or MIK, located 700 metres away. As with the Soyuz launch complexes at Baikonur and Plesetsk, the pad is connected to the MIK by means of a wide gauge railway, along which the rocket is transported before erection at the pad.
Unlike other Soyuz launch complexes, the pad features a mobile service tower, where the payload is integrated when the rocket is in the vertical position; at Baikonur and Plesetsk the payload is horizontally integrated in the MIK before the rocket is moved to the pad. The tower shrouds the rocket during integration, but is moved back to a safe distance (again on rails) prior to launch.
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