"France had a problem. The country’s space agency has been at the forefront of ballooning for a half-century, sending helium-filled balloons high into the atmosphere to study everything from ozone depletion over the North Pole to monsoons in West Africa and the accuracy of satellite solar cells. But these mammoth balloons, which can stretch as tall as the Eiffel Tower and as wide as an NHL arena, require wide-open spaces to be launched, hard to find nowadays in France. Enter Timmins, Ont. The Northeastern Ontario mining city will become home to a new space-balloon launch site, a partnership between the Canadian Space Agency and France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES)."
— France boldly enters next frontier in space exploration: Timmins, Ont. - The Globe and Mail
