Construction of the new Soyuz launch facility at the Guiana Space Centre (Centre Spatial Guyanais – CSG), Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Wide-angle view of the almost-complete Soyuz launch system. The four primary support arms are shown in their closed position, when they form a support ring around the ‘waist’ of Soyuz to suspend the vehicle over its launch pad. Directly behind the two rear support arms is the set of umbilical masts that will service the Soyuz Block A core stage, its Block I third stage, the Fregat upper stage and the payload. Visible below in the launch table’s 15-metre diameter circular opening are four triangular guides that will be connected to the four strap-on boosters – providing stability for the suspended vehicle until liftoff. The two other arms extending into the opening carry electrical umbilicals for the Soyuz boosters and the Block A core stage. Credits: ESA / CNES / Arianespace / Optique vidéo du CSG - J. M. Guillon

Recent reports from the Paris Air Show hinted at a construction delay at Roscosmos' new Soyuz launch facility at "Europe's Spaceport" on the Atlantic coast in French Guiana.

Launching into orbit from the equator carries advantages not unlike Russia's centuries-long effort to gain an ice-free seaport. Those advantages should not be taken lightly.

Based on a report from the European Space Agency, Thursday, construction is obviously very far along, something made clear by the pictures accompanying.

Instead of launching from French Guiana in late 2009, as originally planned, Roscosmos now says Soyuz will begin launching, much closer to the equator and over water, in early 2010.

In the space business, that's not really much of a delay.

The immediate advantage to launching from near the equator is the huge reduction in energy needed to attain earth orbit.

Beginning at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, very far inland, more than halfway to the North Pole, and where nearly every Russian orbital mission has launched since 1957 Soyuz is already clipping along even still, at a leisurely 323 meters per second eastward with the speed of Earth's rotation at 45° north latitude.

In the Americas, however, ESA's Spaceport in French Guyana is only 5.4° north of the equator, and ESA's Ariane V starts its flight already moving toward the east with the surface of the earth at 463 meters per second.

That extra 140 meters per second may not seem like much, though it makes a big difference in the amount of weight that the same booster can hoist into orbit. At $10,000 a kilogram this lowers costs in hauling up the same cargo and increases payload weight for identical boosters.

Another advantage is less obvious.

The Moon's orbital plain never comes closer than about 5° north or south of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, where the Sun and ecliptic can still be precisely overhead.

But the surface of the Moon is never perpendicular to any booster while standing straight up at Cape Canaveral, and its orbital plain is never further North than Cuba.

Because the ecliptic is never directly over Kennedy Space Center, and never comes to its closest more than once each day, the difference has to be made up in energy used in off-plain maneuvers around the orbital nodes it shares with the Moon twice during each of a vehical's orbit, or more usually expends energy using something less than an efficient vector during a Moon-bound vehicle's boost to orbit from Cape Canaveral.

If your goal is orbit or the Moon, or beyond to nearly anywhere in this star system, the opportunities and highest effeciencies begin near the equator.

It's not hard to see why Russia is investing in the lifting of crew and cargo into orbit so close to the place where ESA has been launching payloads for more than a quarter century.

AFP The first launches by the veteran Russian rocket Soyuz and a new light rocket called Vega from Europe's space base will be postponed to 2010, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Monday.

They had been scheduled to take place by the end of the year.

A workhorse of space, Soyuz is being added to ESA's launch pad at Kourou, French Guiana, to provide the agency with operational flexibility, to cope with medium-level payloads while the Ariane 5 rocket takes care of heavy payloads.

ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain told reporters at the Paris Air Show that there were delays in a Russian-made mobile gantry that will be added to the launch pad.

"The mobile gantry should have been integrated now, meaning that the first launch of Soyuz from French Guiana will take place now in the first weeks of 2010 instead of the end of 2009," Dordain said.

Soyuz until now has only been launched from Plesetsk, northern Russia, and from Baikonur, in Kazakhstan, and has not used a gantry for support.

The version that will be used in Kourou will be a "Soyuz 2", able to hoist three tonnes into geostationary orbit, compared to 1.7 tonnes that can be launched from Baikonur.

Meanwhile, Dordain added there were delays in completing the testing of a new light rocket called Vega that will be the third component of the flexible launcher strategy.

Vega, with a payload capacity of 1.5 tonnes, is to be deployed from the launchpad of the old Ariane-1 rocket. ESA had hoped to have the rocket take its maiden flight by the end of 2009.

The Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft, mounted atop the same launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age, is scheduled for takeoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:34:49 a.m. EDT.

Soyuz commander Roman Romanenko, son of a Russian cosmonaut, will be strapped into the center seat, flanked by European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk, a shuttle veteran.

"I can't think of three finer gentlemen to help us realize our dream of six permanent crew in orbit," Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager, told the Soyuz crew Tuesday.

Assuming an on-time liftoff, Romanenko plans to oversee an automated approach and docking to an Earth-facing port on the front end of the space station's Russian Zarya module at 8:36 a.m. Friday. Waiting to welcome their new crewmates aboard will be Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka, NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata.

William Harwood cnet has the story HERE.

From Anatoly Zak (via BBC) Engineers are considering a rocket-powered landing system for the successor to Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

If accepted, it would be the first time in history that a manned vehicle relied solely on rocket engines for touchdown.

Previous manned missions have landed on Earth using a parachute or, in the case of space shuttles, a pair of wings.

RKK Energia, Russia's prime developer of manned spacecraft, had to examine the feasibility of the rocket-powered landing as a result of conflicting requirements for the project set by the Russian government.

Currently, Russian cosmonauts are carried into orbit on the three-seat Soyuz capsule. Russia is developing the new craft as a replacement to this venerable spacecraft, which has been in service for more than four decades.

The Soyuz does use small solid propellant motors to soften its touchdown, but the ship's parachute plays the main role in providing the vehicle and crew with a safe landing.

New launch site: In 2007, Moscow took the momentous decision to build a new launch site in the nation's far east, hoping to end Russia's dependency on the spaceport in Baikonur, which, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, ended up in the newly independent republic of Kazakhstan.

The new site, which has been dubbed Vostochny, or simply "Eastern", will be located almost as far south as Baikonur - an important orbital mechanics factor which determines the cargo-carrying capacity of rockets.

(Increasing the cargo capacity even more would result from the Russian - ESA partnership calling for a devoted Russian launch facility on the equator at Kourou.)