Latin American countries with space programs: colleagues or competitors?

Air & Space Power Journal, Fall, 2003 by Robert D. Newberry

1. Investigate and monitor natural resources.

2. Map the Amazon and track the rate of deforestation.

3. Monitor agricultural production.

4. Provide communications to remote Amazon and Andean regions. (3)

Brazil developed a three-phase program to purchase needed space technologies while developing an indigenous capability to eventually replace the need for outside support. The first phase, which ran from 1973 to 1984, included the purchase of US Earth-resources data from the land satellite (LANDSAT) program and a program to develop information technologies to receive, record, process, analyze, and disseminate the information. The second phase, from 1985 to 1994, expanded the sources of imagery products, including the French Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre satellites and the European Earth Resources Satellites. This phase invested additional money in indigenous capabilities to build laboratories for space-imagery research, simulation, mapping products, and the development of geoprocessing techniques. The third phase, which started in 1995, will expand the technology base to other imagery products, such as microwave sensors, and the operation of their indigenously produced imagery and communications satellites. (4) Unable to produce a large-scale imagery satellite on its own, Brazil eventually entered into a joint-development project with the Chinese Academy of Space Technology for the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS). (5) Brazil also codeveloped the companion Scientific Cientifico (SACI) satellites in collaboration with both the United States and China as a technology test-bed activity. (6) The tremendously successful MECB has provided Brazil with a robust and very capable space program.

Implementation of the MECB initially put Brazil at odds with the United States due to its objective of developing a rocket. The United States invoked the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 1995 with the discovery that Russia was selling advanced missile technology to Brazil. Russia agreed to stop sales to Brazil, which cast the United States in a role of trying to stall that country's space program. (7) The fact that Brazil also explored the purchase of Cyclone missiles from the Ukraine and missile technology from China further irritated the United States. Brazil eventually decided not to oppose the United States and signed on to the MTCR in 1995. But agreeing to the MTCR did not open the doors to missile technology, and the United States insisted that Brazil agree to a Technology Safeguard Agreement (TSA) to allay concerns about technology transfers to third parties, particularly China. (8) Although the executive branches of both countries were able to reach agreement on the TSA, the Brazilian Congress has not ratified it because of significant concerns about the effect on Brazil's sovereignty. Brazil halted plans for developing an indigenous launch capability at Alcantara to appease US concerns and is now developing a commercial space-launch facility to compete with French Guiana for business. (9) The US Air Force planned to use Alcantara to launch a satellite on a Pegasus rocket but moved to Kwajalein Atoll since the TSA had not been ratified at the time of the January 2003 launch. (10)