Centre de Lancement de Ballons (CLBA), Aire Sur L'Adour

From the beginnings of the French Space Agency (CNES) back to 1961, the experiments involving stratospheric balloons were present in the research efforts of the country, Thus is not surprising that this interest lead to the decision to create a permanent center for the development of these activities.

Although some test flights were made during 1963, is not until the 12 of September of 1964 that was born officially the Balloon Launch center of Aire Sur L'Adour, located aside the local aerodrome, in the department of Landes, in the southwest part of the country. Initially the possibility considered was that the launching site would be located in the facilities of the military air base of Mont-of-Marsan, but two main reasons finally inclined the balance in favor of Aire Sur L'Adour: first is a very stable meteorological zone where the airflows around the 25000 meters flow smoothly and it is located close to the aeronautical facilities of Potez, where at the time of the opening of the center, not only airplanes and its spare parts were made in, but the tetrahedral balloons used in those first experiences.

The progressive consolidation of the facility allowed that actually it occupies a surface of almost 12 hectares with a launch pad of near 300 meters in length, with a permanent working force of 30 people. A well equiped integration building, machine shops, and a flight control center lets to develope extensive launching campaigns with cappabilities to launch balloons from 1000 m3 to the bigger ones near 400.000 m3.

The period of activity of the center goes from September to May time at which the winds move towards the east and the payloads are recovered in the southeast side of the country using a helicopter with the support of a pair of Land Rover vehicles. Althought back in the 80,s was tested a flight technique called "boomerang" to perform flights over the Ocean, actually, during the summer months, the launches are performed from the alternative base of Gap-Tallard in the east side of the country.

The center is also an important motor of the local economy, since the city benefits from the great amount of foreign scientists and technicians wich annually visits the base.

In addition to the local launch activity, the center has one complete infrastructure developed completely in "transportable containers" wich allow to establish a movable launching point in any place of the world. Several campaigns were developed using this equipment, the latest ones from Timón in the northeast of Brazil (Southamerica) and from the military zone of the Nimaey airport in Niger (Africa).

Clearly, the early french interest in ballooning along with the sustained work during near 40 years lead to the actual leadership of the agency in the field, only shadowed in the rest of the world by the NASA's program.

[Back to Home Page]  [Back to Balloon launch bases]