As often as eight times in a year, a French Navy (Marine Nationale Aeronavale) Dassault Falcon 50M SURMAR (SURveillance MARitime) of the unit Flottille 24F deploys to Cayenne in French Guyana via Dakar, Senegal from its home base at Lann-Bihoue in France. While there, the Falcon 50M conducts patrols of the French exclusive economic zone offshore before Ariane rocket launches from the Kourou Space Centre to be sure the areas were the rocket's boosters fall back to earth are clear of shipping.

Source: Air International, August 2009. "SAR Dream Machine" by Henri-Pierre Grolleau, p50.

In 1955 De Havilland began work on the Blue Steak, a medium-range ballistic missile that would have been based in underground silos in eastern England. Powered by two Rolls-Royce RZ.2 liquid-fuelled engines (which were based on the earlier RZ.1 which themselves were based on the US Rocketdyne S-2 engine), it would have been armed with a single nuclear warhead. Several complete systems minus the warhead were live-fired at test stands at RAF Spadeadam and were shown to be very robust and reliable.

In 1960 the Blue Streak was cancelled in favor of the Douglas Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile which was to have been carried by Avro Vulcans in RAF service. Work on the Blue Streak continued as a space launcher, though, with its proven live-fire reliability an asset as a satellite launcher. However, later that year it was cancelled altogether, but all was not lost. The Blue Streak formed the basis for the Europa booster which in turn led to the Ariane launcher used by the European Space Agency.

Source: British Secret Projects, Hypersonics, Ramjets, & Missiles by Chris Gibson and Tony Buttler. Midland Publishing, 2007, p125.