Latin American countries with space programs: colleagues or competitors?

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

The second area of US concern about Brazil's space program is its codevelopment of space technology with China. The initial CBERS development did not particularly trouble the United States since it considered the satellites relatively unsophisticated. At the time, China relied on the Fanhui Shi Weixing imagery satellites, which used film capsules with one-meter-quality images and had to be de-orbited from space. (11) For CBERS, China funded 70 percent of the project and launched the satellite from its own territory using the Long March rocket; Brazil contributed the rest of the funding, mostly tied to development of the 20-meter imaging pay load. (12) The main concern of the United States was that China was gaining a near-real-time reconnaissance capability instead of taking an average of three days to recover and process film capsules. Since the United States, France, European Union, and others already offered commercial imagery of better quality, the United States did not consider CBERS a significant threat to its interests. This attitude changed somewhat in November 2002, when China and Brazil announced their follow-on agreement to produce CBERS-3 and -4 to fund the program on 50-50 shares and improve the imaging payload to five meters. (13) The new agreement will also explore the feasibility of jointly developing a geostationary weather satellite based on the CBERS model. (14)

Partly as a consequence of the difficulty of working with the United States, Brazil has independently pursued its space program; however, its relationship with the United States has not been completely characterized by conflict, and Brazil has continued to participate in US-led space programs. For example, Brazil was the third country to participate in the US LANDSAT program and is the third largest user of US-provided satellite imagery. (15) It is supplying $120 million worth of hardware over five years to the International Space Station, (16) has an astronaut in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) space-shuttle cadre, and continues to participate in the hitchhiker program to place experimental payloads on the space shuttle. In addition to collaborating with the United States on microsatellite technology, Brazil has also teamed with other US allies such as the United Kingdom. (17) Although one might justifiably categorize Brazil as both a US colleague and competitor, it is principally a competitor.

Mexico, on the other hand, has a much less ambitious space program than Brazil's and a very different focus. Its major space interests involve integrating the country with telecommunications services for governmental command and control of resources and pursuing commercial activities such as banking and entertainment. Therefore, instead of emphasizing imagery, Mexico has concentrated on communications services. Like most countries, it was an early participant in the INTELSAT and INMARSAT programs and subscribed to US systems for telecommunications services for domestic audiences. In 1997 the Mexican government created the Satelites Mexicanos, S.A. de C.V. (Satmex) to oversee its satellite operations. Satmex teamed with Loral to operate the Morelos, Solidaridad, and Satmex telecommunications satellites Mexico purchased from the United States. (18) In 1996 the National Autonomous University (UNAM) launched the UNAMSAT-B microsatellite it had developed with the Radio Amateur Satellite (AMSAT) organization. (19) In general, Mexico's main space involvement has entailed financing space communications programs and contracting with US companies for their operation. Because Mexico has taken a decidedly cooperative stance with the United States in the development of space capabilities, it is one of America's space colleagues.