SCI TIRPEN

Our group of 17 international tourists were able to get a complete bus tour today. We made reservations in advance. Note that you must have passport or French ID to enter. Tours may be cancelled at any time for launches, which are not shared for security reasons. ALLAN guided us through many sites inc a control room, rocket booster storage area, and several areas that showed the process of the construction of various parts of the rocket. The vast area offers a solar panel field with one more under construction and another ready to be started. The museum is interesting for just enough detail to the scientific process. Bus and some areas are acccessible by steps Bring water, walking shoes even though there is not much walking, hat and sunscreen. The center offered a museum and gift shop. The museum includes interactive activities for adults and for kids. Kids can build their own drawing of a rocket ship and followed the path of a rocket shift in an interactive exhibit. The gift shop offers, educational kids, activities, postcards, hats, and trademark T-shirts.

The guided bus tour was really awesome and super cool that it was free! We enjoyed learning about the space port and seeing Mission Control. The museum part was not as exciting. It feels very geared toward little kids, so for us (a group of adults), it was not very exciting and felt a bit like a waste of the admit fee. I would definitely do the tour again, but probably not the museum.

Great to learn about euro space launch missions. You can see the launches from designated areas so find out when they have a launch and plan accordingly. When no launch planned for a few days, you can go into some of the areas close up

Must do in Kourou, super interesting tour of the facilities. Normally English explanations can be given at bus stops but my group was smaller, so one of the guides was so nice to offer to sit next to me and give me explanations on the go. The tour mostly takes place on the bus and took for me about 2.5 hours.

Attended the French Guyana Space Centre tour which took about 3.5 hours including registration and waiting time. Tour was very interesting with background and history of the rocket launches and visits to the different rocket launch pads by bus. The tour was conducted in French but the tour guide was very gracious and kind to separately explain to me in English. Fascinating and worthwhile tour

It is indeed a uniquement experience to do the tour of Europe space center in French Guyana! Before you go, you have to call and book your tour, way before! Then on the day of visit, they ask your identity card, to make sure that the name on the list is the same as the visiter. So make sure to have your identity card on you. The tour is free of charge and available in French and English. Once, your identity is checked, you get on the bus with other visitors and you have to count 4 hours of visit. There are some sites on the tour in which you can't take photos! You just have to admire with your eyes! Since it s a protected area with a lot of securities, watch around carefuly, you might spot Jaguars, sloths and other animals, who live freely in the area! We couldn't find any unfortunately!

The lecture given in the Jupiter control room was excellent by a very knowledgeable person who could answer detailed questions with ease. But the security checks on entry were totally over the top and very badly handled. It took almost an hour to clear 80 people whose passport details had been sent in advance. The staff used printed sheets instead of a computer, taking ages to locate individuals with seemingly random listing of people by the surname or maiden name adding to the delays. They then quibbled about typos in things like place of birth. Rocket science this was not!

The guided visit happens twice a day and requires reservations in advance. No English information provided, i think such a important would do a better job with non french speaking.