SCIENCE: Brazil-China Alliance Disputes Space Technology Market

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 13 1999 (IPS) - The space technology alliance between Brazil and China will produce its first strategic result this week – the launch of the CBERS-1 satellite, with which the programme will begin to dispute a market dominated by the industrialised North.

The first China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) is to be launched – the tentative launch time is 23:26 GMT Thursday – from the Taiyuan Launch Site, 300 kms from Beijing.

Weighing 1,400 kgs and with a two-year lifetime, CBERS-1 will produce detailed images of the earth’s surface from an altitude of 778 kms, which will provide, for instance, information on damaged forests and other environmental data, as well as images allowing the detection of suspicious movements by drug traffickers.

The satellite’s reports will enrich the Amazon Vigilance System, a complex of radars, planes, electronic and space equipment with which the Brazilian government aims to more closely observe and control the Amazon jungle region, especially along the borders with other countries.

Besides contributing to defence and police efforts, the satellite will provide precise information on land resources and human activities in the country, said Minister of Science and Technology Ronaldo Sardenberg.

With the CBERS programme, Brazil and China, two developing nations, are joining the handful of countries dominating the market of satellite images.

Brazil, which is footing 30 percent of the programme’s 150 million dollar price tag, will no longer be a mere user of but rather a provider of satellite images, stressed the Foreign Ministry.

The three cameras of the CBERS-1 will take high resolution photos of sections of up to 20 square metres, which will enable the detection of boats on rivers and drug installations in forests, according to Marcio Barbosa, director of Brazil’s National Institute of Space Investigations (INPE).

One of the lenses also captures infrared rays, which makes it possible to take photos without depending on light. The satellite can photograph the entire world in five days.

The Chinese-Brazilian association in this strategic technological area emerged from an agreement signed 11 years ago by INPE and the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, during a visit by then-president of Brazil, José Sarney, to Beijing.

A Chinese rocket, the fourth of the Long March series, will launch the satellite. The rocket will also carry a small, 60-kg Brazilian-made satellite, the SACI-1, which will conduct four experiments in atmospheric research.

Brazil is also developing its own satellite launch rocket. But the first launch failed last year, when the rocket exploded in the air carrying a data-collection satellite, also manufactured by Brazil.

Brazil’s space programme is the last holdover of the ambitious projects aimed at asserting the country’s technological capacity, the product of dreams of autonomous scientific and economic development that picked up steam in the 1970s, under the 1964-85 military regime.

Since then, the country has seen its plans for the development of national nuclear, computer and defence industries run aground.

Brazil has just one nuclear plant, of the nine envisioned, and it finally signed the international treaty for the non- proliferation of nuclear weapons which it had criticised as discriminatory.

Nor has Brazil – the world’s eighth largest economy – been successful in developing a computer industry, and the government was finally forced to ease restrictions on imports. Nationally- produced missiles and armoured combat vehicles, meanwhile, lost market share, and companies in the sector ended up going under.

But the Brazilian Space Mission continued its work, setting up teaching and research centres and production plants in Sao José dos Campos, 100 kms from Sao Paulo.

It also built the Alcántara Base in the northern state of Maranhao, whose proximity to the equator is essential in the process of launching satellites, and thus a factor that could play in its favour in the space technology business.

In November, the Brazilian Space Agency, which is coordinating the programme, will attempt to put another satellite, the SACI-2, into orbit from Alcántara, launched by a Brazilian rocket. Success would mean Brazil dominates the entire cycle of the high-tech process.

Besides the nationally-manufactured SACI and SCD satellites – two of the latter have already been launched from bases abroad – Brazil’s efforts are to continue through the association with China, which is to produce CBERS numbers three and four.

Brazil is negotiating a similar agreement with Argentina, to build a satellite – the SABIAAA – for obervation of water, air and agriculture.