BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) – The United States and Russia are competing for a strategic role in Brazil’s plan to launch commercial satellites from its base near the equator, opening up a new theatre in their rivalry for allies and influence.
Brazil’s government expects to choose a partner to help provide technology in the coming months, three sources with knowledge of the deliberations told Reuters.
Brazil partnered with Ukraine over the past decade to develop a launch vehicle at the Alcantara base on its northern Atlantic coast. But Brazil ended the programme in February, saying that Ukraine’s financial problems left it unable to provide rockets as promised.
President Dilma Rousseff will select the new partner based on a range of factors including Brazil’s diplomatic relations and the quality of technology on offer, the sources said.
A satellite partnership will not be on the agenda when Rousseff visits the White House on June 30, officials from both countries said.
But the tenor of the visit, which marks a rapprochement between Brazil and the United States after two years of strained ties over National Security Agency (NSA) spying programmes, could influence her decision, one source said.
“If it goes well, the Americans will be well-positioned to win this,” said the source, a former Brazilian official who participated in meetings on the satellite issue.
Alcantara’s location makes it particularly attractive to potential partners. Satellites that orbit the equator do not have to travel far to get into place, reducing fuel costs by as much as a fifth compared to other locations.
European space-transport company Arianespace, which has half the world market for putting satellites in geostationary orbit, uses a launch site at Kourou in neighbouring French Guiana.
It’s unclear exactly what form Brazil’s next partnership will take.
Under the previous deal, Ukraine provided the technology to jointly build Cyclone-4 rockets with Brazil, which was responsible for providing the launch facility.
Brazilian officials, frustrated with decades of delays and setbacks, said they could completely rethink the terms of its next partnership.
“The programme with Ukraine did not work out,” Defense Minister Jaques Wagner told Reuters. He said Brazil would “talk with any country,” including the United States, to get a Brazilian satellite into space.
Alcantara’s troubled history includes an accident in 2003, when an explosion and fire destroyed a Brazilian-made rocket and killed 21 people. The disaster ended Brazil’s plans of building its own rockets and led it to turn to Ukraine.
A variety of countries have worked with Brazil on space issues. Over the past two decades, China has used its rockets and launch site to put up five small satellites that Brazil uses to observe agriculture, the environment and the Amazon rainforest.
In 2014, in the wake of the NSA espionage scandal set off by documents leaked by Edward Snowden, Brazil picked French aerospace supplier Thales over a US rival to build a $400 million geostationary satellite that will be launched by Europe’s Arianespace from French Guiana in 2016.
Brazil still needs a senior partner to realize its goal of launching a satellite from Alcantara. The rocket and satellite technology it hopes to acquire in that partnership would give a boost to its well-established aerospace industry.
