Shaba North (also mentioned as Kapani Tonneo)
was the launch site of the first
rocket
A rocket (from , and so named for its shape) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using any surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely ...
s launched by Orbital Transport und Raketen AktienGesellschaft, or Orbital Forwarding Company in
English ("
OTRAG").
It is located at the edge of a
mesa
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge, or hill, bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and standing distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks, such as shales, capped by a ...
in Shaba (now
Katanga province
Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914.
It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika Province, Tanganyika, Hau ...
), the
Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...
. In 1976
Luvua Airport was built to supply the site.
In 1977 and in 1978 three test flights of
OTRAG rockets were launched from Shaba North.
In 1979 OTRAG stopped launching rockets from Shaba North for political reasons.
Its launching activities were later moved to
Sabha,
Libya
Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...
.
Launches
Three test flights were launched from Shaba North.
Nearest locations
*
Luvua Airport
*
Kalemie
References
Rocket launch sites in DRC
{{DRCongo-geo-stub