Posted: Tue, Feb 17, 2004, 10:41 AM ET (1541 GMT)
There are no plans to conduct manned Soyuz launched from the European launch facility in Kourou, the head of the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos said Tuesday. Yuri Koptev told reporters in Moscow that although ESA has agreed to fund development of launch facilities at Kourou to support Soyuz vehicles, those launches will be solely used for unmanned payloads. The high costs of equipping the launch facility with safety features needed for human spaceflight was one reason for not using Kourou for human launches. Another reason is that the flight path for Kourou launches goes over open ocean, which would make crew rescue in the event of an abort "problematic", according to Koptev. The Kourou site will use the Soyuz-2 rocket, an upgraded version of the existing Soyuz vehicle. That booster will perform its first test flight from Plesetsk later this year. Koptev also said that he plans to lobby the other international partners in the ISS project to increase the size of the station’s permanent crew to six, using a second Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station as an escape capsule.
