A two-day meeting brought together the Roscosmos and Arianespace press/public affairs teams at the Russian Federal Space Agency’s headquarters in Moscow. Representatives of the Russian Federal Space Agency’s (Roscosmos) Press Office and Arianespace’s Public Affairs Office held their first working meeting of 2009 to discuss informational and communications policies for the upcoming operations of Soyuz from the Spaceport in French Guiana. Photo: The two-day meeting brought together the Roscosmos and Arianespace press/public affairs teams at the Russian Federal Space Agency’s headquarters in Moscow.

The January 20-21 meeting in Moscow covered such topics as procedures for accommodating the news media for Soyuz missions, along with the means of providing regular updates during launch campaigns for this medium-lift vehicle.  Joining the discussions on January 21 was Sergey Saveliev, the Deputy Head of Roscosmos.

Soyuz is scheduled to begin its operations from the Spaceport late this year, joining the heavy-lift Ariane 5, which has been in service since the 1990s.  These two vehicles ultimately will be joined at the Spaceport by the lightweight Vega, providing a complete family of commercial launch vehicles operating from one of the world’s most modern launch sites.

Roscosmos is prime contractor for the Russian-built Soyuz, with responsibility for providing the workhorse vehicle that introduced the space age in 1957, and which continues to serve for commercial, governmental and human spaceflight missions.  More than 1,730 Soyuz launches have been performed to date, including 21 commercial flights from Baikonur Cosmodrome under the commercial management of Arianespace’s Starsem affiliate company.  These missions serve as the precursor to Soyuz’ upcoming introduction at the Spaceport.