June 1980:Brazil in space

Brazilian space activities started with the creation, in the 1960s, of two separate institutes:

• INPE, or Institute for Space Research, as part of the National Council for the Development of Science and Technology, is the main agency for civilian space research.

• IAE, or Institute for Space Activities, depending on the Ministry of Aeronautics and on its Centro Technico Aeroespacial (CTA) is concerned with the development of Brazilian rocketry.

The INPE and IAE have their respective headquarters located side-by-side at Sao José dos Campos (State of Sao Paulo). In some fields of space applications, the two institutes have redundant activities, due to their specific characters: INPE is civilian and iAE is managed by military authorities. Both institutes are particularly interested in remote sensing observations.

The Technology of Spacecraft

Hopefully, the first Brazilian satellites will be launched in the early 1980s. Since 1971, INPE has been studying the use of spacecraft technology in astrophysics, remote sensing, ionosphere, meteorology and geodesy studies. Total staff of INPE numbers between 750 and 1000, approximately 10% of whom are graduates. Major facilities are established at Sao José dos Campos (headquarters) and in Cachoeira Paulista (balloon launching centre); other installations are at Cuiaba (Landsat receiving station), at Natal (rocket launching facility) and at Fortaleza (satellite tracking centre).

INPE is regularly launching stratospheric balloons equipped with highly efficient telescopes which are realized in cooperation with some European nations (France, Italy, Belgium) and with the United States. With "Sonda" rockets and with NASA satellites, precise measurements have been made of certain ionospheric effects in South America.

In meteorological observations, INPE has a very active role in the collection of useful data concerning the Southern Hemisphere: it investigates the atmosphere with sounding rockets and operates a network of stations for the reception and processing of signals from near-polar orbit NOAA satellites and from the geostationary GOES and Meteosat.

INPE finds two space applications particularly interesting for developing the very large territory of Brazil (8.5 million km). These are remote sensing of Earth resources using Landsat imagery, and communications satellites for economic and educational purposes. INPE is testing a Bandeirante aeroplane equipped with several sensors in order to improve the interpretation of Landsat data. The most significant programme for Brazil is the Crop Survey: with the former configuration of INPE’s Image-100 system (developed by General Electric), very good results have been obtained from surveys of areas of approximately 36,000 km. The short term objective is to have a crop survey system for sugar cane covering the entire State of Sao Paulo, which is one of the most important in terms of agriculture.

An objective of the coming years is the development of satellite hardware in Brazil. INPE is organizing a Satellite Technology Programme for the definition of the first Brazilian spacecraft: this will be a scientific satellite which must be put into a low Earth orbit by a national launch vehicle.

Concerning preparations for the domestic comsat project,the Brazilian industry is interested in supplying a large proportion of the required materials and equipment. In fact, Brazil would expect to take up the domestic satellite system by 1982 or 1983. According to the Minister of Communications, “the putting into orbit of a domestic satellite by Brazil can be considered from two different points of view: on the one hand, the satellite could contribute effectively to the rationalization of the occupation of Amazonia and the establishment of man in the interior of the country, through the supply of public telecommunications services, including television, which today attracts thousands of migrants to the cities. On the other hand,the geosynchronous orbit occupied by the communications satellites is limited, like a kind of nonrenewable resource. It is thus essential that Brazil should occupy its place with relative urgency". There would be technical and economic advantages in integrating the present Earth-based microwave system with communications via satellite in a country the size of Brazil, large areas of which still lack the means of transportation and even with low population density, as is the case in Amazonia and the West Central region.

During the past ten years, the Embratel company expanded and modernized the telecommunications system, changing the Brazilian “archipelago” into a real continent. Embratel transformed Brazil by installing more than 20,000 km of microwave routes, a network of coastal stations, communication via satellite, two undersea cables between Brazil and Europe and Brazil-USA. Actually, Brazil is using Intelsat 4A with 10 Earth stations; it has an important centre, with three antennae, at Tangua, near Rio de Janeiro.

Towards a Satellite Launcher

Brazilian authorities and industries are studying plans to make their country capable of launching satellites; Brazil expects to follow India as a “space power”. The development of the national launch vehicle, based on the technology of the present “Sonda” rockets, is the principal task of the IAE engineers and technicians. Currently, IAE is working on solid boosters for sounding rockets and missiles. Its modern launch complex is located on the north-eastern coast of Brazil, near the city of Natal: it is the Rocket Launch Site at the Barrier of Hell or Campo de Lanfamento de Foguetes da Barreira do Inferos (CLFBI). From the CLFBI range, three models of Sonda rockets are currently fired for technological and scientific purposes some of them with cooperative payloads. The family of the Sonda solid rockets includes several variants:

• Sonda I is a small two-stage rocket (3.1 m or 10 ft) long able to launch 5 kg (11 lb) up to altitudes of 100 km (62 miles) for meteorological observations; more than 200 Sonda I have been used together with a number of foreign rockets.

• Sonda II has three different versions and is a single-stage rocket. Sonda II A and Sonda II-B are operational and regularly launched in order to conduct experiments up to 120 km (70 miles) altitude. Sonda II-C is the most powerful and can launch payloads of 50 kg (110 lb) to an altitude of more than 200 km (125 miles).

• Sonda III is another two stage solid rocket which uses as its second stage the Sonda II-A. Launched since February 1976, it can carry 60 kg (130 lb) up to high altitudes (600 km or 380 miles).

For the 1980s, IAE is preparing more powerful boosters in order to develop a Brazilian launch vehicle for small satellites.