**City of Timmins News Release**

The current Stratospheric Balloon launch campaign was the perfect time for the Centre National d’Étude Spatiales (CNES) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to sign a letter of intent to continue their cooperation in the City of Timmins.
The CNES and CSA signed this letter at Timmins City Hall on Thursday, August 23, expressing their intent to extend the implementation arrangement, considering the possibility of including new elements for the benefit of their respective user communities.

 
“It’s been a very successful collaborative program that has brought us to Timmins quite a number of times, and 2018 is a very interesting program in that we’re looking at launching five of the balloons. Each one has a specific purpose, and each one is looking at pushing the scientific knowledge to the next level,” explained CSA President Sylvain Laporte. “But also, it is quite important from the point of view of having participation from students across the country of different levels of education, and this allows us, both of our countries, to expose young children to scientific discovery opportunities that may eventually help guide them in their career decision to maybe pursue scientific studies.
 

We have in place a long-term agreement but when this was first started back in 2013, there was a lot of trial and error in terms of how do we do this, what are the respective roles of each other, how long should we look at collaborating. But clearly, after about five years of operations of this program, although our long-term agreement is not coming to an end, we’ve seen sufficient benefits to signal to our teams and to the region and the town, that we’re looking at continuing this collaboration for the long-term because it’s very beneficial to us, and hopefully the town and the region sees the benefits of having this program in timmins as well.”
 
Mayor Steve Black expressed how grateful the City of Timmins has been to have an ideal site for such an exciting scientific research and education venture.
CNES President Jean-Yes Le Gall, who travelled from Paris “in the perfect weather conditions,” expressed how happy they were to be in Timmins for the cooperation between France and Canada in Space on many projects.
 

He explained how Timmins offers a unique location in mid-latitude to launch balloons, and expressed his utmost satisfaction with what is happening here and said he feels very ambitious to move forward.
 
Both organizations intend to expand the range of balloons used to include the operation of small, lightweight, expandable balloons to allow access to the scientific community on light platforms, which can also be used to demonstrate new technologies that are particularly adapted to raining of young engineers and scientists.
 
“We’re definitely honoured to have the opportunity work with the space agencies and look forward to the work ahead,” added Mayor Black. “This is a tremendous opportunity for everyone, and brings a light to the science community, showing youth the fun and excitement in the sciences.”