Behind the roar of the engines and the visual spectacle of each lift-off at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, a critical division is at work whose role tends to go unnoticed, unless something goes wrong: the Flight Safety Division ('Flight Safety Division').
This team has a clear mission: to guarantee the absolute protection of the population and of the technical staff from the moment the rocket leaves the launch pad until all its stages have been deactivated and fallen back to Earth.
Euronews spoke to Léonard Buchaillot, flight safety engineer at the French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), to understand how all the safety measures around a launch of this scale are managed.
Real-time monitoring and trajectory analysis
Safety work does not begin with engine ignition. Hours before lift-off, specialists process and assess meteorological data in real time to rule out weather-related risks in Kourou.
