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Powdery Substance Mailed To Arianespace Undergoing Tests
By PETER B. de SELDING
Space News Staff Writer
posted: 02:52 pm ET
15 October 2001
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arianespace_powder_011015 PARIS The headquarters of the Arianespace launch consortium and the launcher directorate of the French space agency, CNES, were evacuated Oct. 15 after a letter containing an unidentified white powder was received by Arianespace. The powder was discovered by Arianespaces mail center, which opens letters automatically and saw white powder falling out of a letter addressed to an Arianespace official, Arianespace spokesman Claude Sanchez said Oct. 15. Sanchez said he did not know the identity of the letters intended recipient. "For now we can only hope this was someones very bad idea for a joke, but what is disturbing is that Ariane would be seen as a possible target," Sanchez said in an interview. Several emergency-relief workers who cordoned off the Arianespace site were being examined in a local hospital as a precautionary measure, he said. About 300 Arianespace personnel, and about the same number of CNES officials that work next door to Arianespace in Evry, France, were evacuated and ordered not to return to their offices. Sanchez said it was unclear whether Arianespace and CNES personnel would be permitted to return to their offices Oct. 16. French government laboratories were still analyzing the powder late Oct. 15. The Arianespace letter was one of more than a dozen containing white powder that were received Oct. 15 in Paris and other French cities, including Evry. French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a press briefing that, for now, there was no proof that any of the envelopes contained anthrax.
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