(Inspired by this thread but I didn’t want to hijack it.)
The thread above linked to this Wikipedia article that mentions almost in passing that Israel was the eighth country to launch orbital satellites. This started me thinking as to how many countries do have the ability to launch anything into orbit.
The US, Russia and China I know. I know that the ESA launches satellites but I don’t know how to count them; I think the actual launches are done by France from French Guyana but I don’t know if any of the other members have launch facilites of their own. I’m pretty sure Japan launches its own satellites as well.
From what I can find it looks like Brazil and India have also launched rockets but am not sure if they were orbital or suborbital. If I combine all of these with Israel I do get eight (counting all of the ESA as a single “country”) but is this list correct? It doesn’t sound right but I’m not even sure if it sounds too high or too low.
So, as of now, what countries have launched a satellite into orbit from their own territory? (Let’s count the ESA as a single entity since it looks like the ESA’s launch facility is in French Guiana) From what I can find it seems to be the US, Russia, the ESA (France), China, Japan, India, Brazil and Israel. Am I missing anyone?
I don’t think you should say it’s France launching the rockets. The Kourou facilities are located in French Guyana, which is French territory, but the rockets are not built by France, nor is it France controlling the launch sites. As with many other European cooperations (confer Airbus), the entire technological process and know-how is split up in many parts, each one of which is taken care of at a different location. It’s more like the entire ESA (which also includes countries athat are not European Union members; the ESA is not affiliated with the EU) being capable of orbital launches, not any specific country. I don’t know if any country would be capable of orbital launches totally on its own.
And don’t forget that orbital launches aren’t necessarily a governmental monopoly. Arianespace is a commercial company capable of orbital launches using its Ariane rockets (it does use the Kourou site, though, and a large portion of its capital is controlled by governmental agencies from various countries, so it’s not entirely private).
However, France made launches before the creation of the ESA, at first from southern Algeria, then only from French Guyana. So, I assume it can be included in the list of countries with launch capability.
Besides, if I’m not mistaken, France owns close to 60% of Arianespace, the european consortium building the rockets and launching them (mostly through the CNES, the national center for space studies), the two others significant contributors being Germany, with around 20% and Italy, with around 10%.
France is also the main contributor to the budget of the ESA, paying something like 30% of it (followed once again by Germany with 20% and Italy with 15%).
So, France is the main contributor to the european space programm and operations, and besides it, only Germany and Italy are significantly involved.
And by the way, this is an heirlom from de Gaulle, like french nuclear weapons. He wanted France to have a space programm of its own. He had the first french satellite launched in 1965 (just checked it) on a french-made “Diamant” rocket.
Based on this, I would be inclined to rule out the UK at this time, since they no longer have an active launch capability. Once could, I suppose, argue that they could if they wanted to, since they did it before; but since their launch infrastruture no longer exists AFAIK, you can’t really include them in a list of current launch-capable coutnries, IMO.
Thanks all. From the wikipedia article it looks as if there are currently 7 “independant” launch countries or entities; Russia, the USA, the ESA, China, Japan, India and Israel. Apparently there are other countries who have done launches of their own but have not independantly created their own satellites and launch vehicles and so aren’t counted (the article mentions Norway, Italy and Kazakhstan) so apparently an exact count is harder to get than one would think. I guess it depends on how self-sufficient someone has to be considered to be before they get counted as performing the launch on their own.