Buran-Energia

The space museum of Kourou is located on the road of Space in direction of the Space Center of Guyana, near the technical center in the same building than the control room Jupiter.

This museum is dedicated to make understand the goal of the space exploration and its utilisation in the everyday life, but through the French and European prism, that’s why the museum is centered on the Ariane launcher.

A full size mock-up of the Ariane 5 is located near the entrance of the museum. At the base of the left booster is located a man’s profil in blue, it helps realizing the size of the rocket.

The visit of the museum begins by panels about the space exploration before the 20th century and the big firsts accomplished during the 20th century.

Section of the tailpipe of Ariane 5 main stage’s engine, the Vulcan.

This area contains different kind of pieces, engines, compressors, tailpipes of the Ariane program.

Tailpipe and Vulcan engine.

Specimen of solid propellant used for the boosters (Étages d’Accélération à Poudre, EAP) of Ariane 5.

Injector of the Viking engine and pouder propeller.

Valves of the third stage of Ariane 5 (from SNECMA).

Servo-motor L140 L33 of Ariane.

Combustion chamber of the cryogenic engine HM7.

Nose cone of Ariane with 2 satellites.

Mock-ups of Ariane 5-4-3-1.

Soviet spacesuit SK-1, Vostok program (Gagarine).

Spacesuit Navy Mark IV, Mercury program (John Glenn).

Pannels about the race to the moon, Soviet side and American side.

Lunar surface with an A7L spacesuit and a Lunar Exploration Module (LEM) on the background.

A serie of Arian’s nose cone.

Illustrative panel about the French manned flights.

Satellite ERS-1 (European Remote Sensing Satellite) launched on 1991 and destroyed on March 10, 2000. Its mission was to collect different kind of informations about the Earth surface (groun, water, ice, atmosphere).

View of the upper stage of Ariane 5.

Pictures taken from space.

Illustrative panels about reconnaissance satellites and telecommunications.

Satellite Matra, the satellite XMM-Newton (observation satellite of X rays), lanched on december 10, 1999. MeteoSat-2 is a meteorogical satellite of second generation, launched on August 28, 2002.

Section of a satellite.

Mock-ups of Ariane 4-3-1.

Section of Ariane’ 4 boosters.

Mock-up of the mains French, Russian and American launchers.