While most Europeans are probably caught up in Christmas preparations by this time of the year, our ESA colleagues and their partners in European industry and aerospace have clocked up quite a history of December launches at Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana, from the very first flight of Ariane-1 on 24 December 1979. To conclude our celebrations for 50 years of ESA, join us for a festive look back at Christmas past in Kourou!
A quick history
The inaugural flight of Ariane on Christmas Eve 1979 set her up as the Christmas baby of European launchers. Its success was naturally followed by festivities at Kourou, including a party in one of the assembly buildings, captured in photographs (below) that have gone on to become emblematic in themselves– although only the ‘snowball’ fight gives a Christmas reference.
In a 2002 interview for the ESA History Project, Raymond Orye (Head of the Ariane Programme for ESA) talked about the party: “The CSG [Centre Spatial Guyanais] fire brigade was also there waiting for us and completely but benignly soaked everyone with water without exception... In the assembly hall there were hundreds of people, the champagne was flowing and the noise level prevented most people from hearing each other. Professor Curien (then President of CNES) and Mr Gibson (then ESA Director General) managed to give their speeches high up on a first stage, then together started singing the song Auprès de ma blonde, whereupon everyone else joined in.”
Orye also recalls that the partners of the Ariane engineers had been invited to Kourou after an earlier December attempt to launch was aborted - “what a great Christmas holiday it was for all concerned”!
A quick scan of the list of launches from then until now shows that throughout its 46-year history, there have been more Decembers with an Ariane launch than those without.
Accordingly, 1979 was quickly followed by another milestone on 20 December 1981, with flight L04 as the final development flight of Ariane-1. Its success qualified the launcher and marked ESA’s first venture into commercial satellites with the launch of Marecs-A, the first European maritime communication satellite, leased to Inmarsat.
However, the prize for the largest stocking of Christmas launches certainly goes to 1999, with three taking place in short succession from French Guiana: V-124 and V-125 of Ariane-4 on 3 and 21 December respectively and the first commercial flight of Ariane-5, V-119 on 10 December , launching ESA’s XMM -Newton satellite, the world's most powerful X-ray astronomy observatory at the time.
And more recently, the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has the distinction of being the only one that actually took place on Christmas day itself – on 25 December 2021.
In 2012 Vega joined the European launcher family, adding its own four December launches to this tradition. The most recent of them was just over a year ago, on 5 December 2024, marking the restart of routine commercial operations for the new Vega C launcher and carrying the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite.
All in all, with the additional nine December launches of Soyuz from Kourou that took place between 2011 and 2021, that amounts to an impressive total of 44 December launches since 1979. Interestingly, precisely half of these – 22 – took place in the week either side of Christmas.
Why December?
This is probably not about escaping the bad weather (or turkey dinner), although that might be an added bonus! Kourou’s location, just 500 kilometres north of the equator, allows launches to benefit from the increased velocity of the ‘slingshot’ effect all year-round, but seasonal variations to this significant advantage are comparatively minimal.
While launches are not generally planned for the holiday period, weather conditions or technical issues means that they don’t always take place on the date that is initially scheduled. And by its nature, the second half of December is also the last chance to launch before the end of the year.
The first flight of Ariane was a case in point, and even more crucial since it was both the inaugural launch and the close of the decade – Orye’s ESA colleague Michel Bignier put it like this: “Sillard [Director General of CNES] knew that if, in the second flight attempt, there was another aborted flight, there wouldn't be enough liquid hydrogen on the launch range, and that would postpone the campaign by three or four months, which would be catastrophic, for public opinion and everything else.”
A Christmas carol (and other traditions)
Perhaps one of the people in ESA who knows Kourou best is Laura Dao, ESA’s Head of Protocol. A clear love of French Guiana, where she began her ESA career as a young graduate, is channelled into her work on the guest operations for ESA launches – by her estimation over 20 in the last six years!
Laura outlined some of the essential elements in the Kourou experience, including visits to the launch facilities, rainforest, Kourou River and sampling the local planter’s punch! While the humidity and mosquitoes don’t sound very Christmassy, she maintains that they encourage an informal atmosphere among the VIP guests that works with the exotic location to make Kourou launches extra special.
Wherever or whenever they take place, all launches contain the two key ingredients of emotion and suspense. Their preparation can be stressful for all parties but on the launch day, everybody is united for the success of the launch. The 18 December 2019 launch of the Cheops satellite stands out for her as the culmination of over ten years of work, and the unique moment when an entire scientific community came together in person. A last-minute 24-hour delay caused by an anomaly in the launch sequence added to the intensity and bonding, in what she describes as ‘a real human experience.’
Elodie Granell, ESA’s Video Production Coordination Officer, is another veteran of Christmas trips to Kourou, both in her current role, and in her previous work with our partners at Arianespace, for whom she covered the JWST launch in 2021. She remembers the touching moment during the live transmission following the successful separation when the Range Operations Manager sent Christmas wishes back home.
Kelsea Brennan-Wessels, who was working alongside her that day as ESA’s Video Production Officer, had also seen her family’s Christmas plans upended. After a launch delay earlier in December, it became clear that she would not make it home in time and she began wondering how to ‘reschedule’ the big day for her two small children. Santa Claus even became involved in an elaborate story that mixed fact and fantasy, where he agreed to postpone Christmas, and give precedence to the rocket, so its flight path could avoid the moon.
In the end, Kelsea enjoyed a very different kind of Christmas dinner, with colleagues from the ESA, Arianespace and NASA broadcast teams, at the local Chinese restaurant.
Christmas present(s)
While they are just the tip of the (festive) iceberg, we are really grateful to everyone above for their stories, and we thank all the teams who have missed Christmas at home over the years, and their families, for their dedication.
If you have your own memories to share, we would love to hear from you – contact us at Archive.Services@esa.int.
In the meanwhile, happy Christmas from the ESA Archives team, wherever you might be spending it!
Holiday reading
The ESA History project Oral History website contains a wealth of interviews that cover Ariane launches, including those with Frédéric D'Allest, Michel, Bignier, Raymond Orye (and also, Peter Creola, Hubert Curien, Bernard Deloffre, Roy Gibson, Klaus Iserland, Guy Kramer and Yves Sillard).
