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