Brazilian parliamentarians have approved a plan to develop the country’s space industry, handing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a victory as he faces setbacks, both in politics and in his personal health.
This Thursday (12), senators voted in favor of creating a state-owned company to provide rocket launch services, a plan that the Brazilian military argues will drastically increase the amount of revenue generated by space missions.
The legislation, approved by the Chamber of Deputies last month, is ready to be signed by Lula as soon as he resumes his activities following emergency brain surgery on Tuesday (10). The 79-year-old president underwent a follow-up procedure on Thursday morning (12) to prevent future bleeding and will be released from the hospital early next week, according to doctors.
The bill creates the Empresa de Projetos Aeroespaciais do Brasil SA, known by the acronym Alada, which will be allowed to negotiate launches with private companies.
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Supporters of the legislation argue that the country has untapped potential. Favorably located in a sparsely populated coastal area near Ecuador, the government’s Alcântara Launch Center has more launch capacity than Cape Canaveral and three other U.S. centers combined, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Rodrigo Alvim, during a hearing last month.
“Brazil has the most privileged position in the world for launching satellites into equatorial orbits,” he said. “The country has infrastructure and is ready to attract these investments.”
During former president Jair Bolsonaro’s government, Brazil made agreements with several companies, including Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit, to use Alcântara. However, the agreements have yet to translate into much activity at the spaceport, with Virgin Orbit declaring bankruptcy last year. Of the 500 launches in Brazil in the last four decades, only one was carried out by a private company, the South Korean Innospace Co. Ltd., from South Korea, in 2023.
Innospace plans more missions in 2025, according to Alvim. As Brazilian law does not allow the government itself to make a profit, Innospace’s contract requires it to pay only the R$250,000.00 (US$41,500.00) cost of each launch, the lieutenant general said.
However, these restrictions do not apply to state-owned companies, and Alada could earn up to 7.5 million reais in revenue per mission, he said.
Market performance
The Alada entity will close agreements with private space companies and will rely on the government to provide services, said Alvim. “It will be able to charge the market price, which in the case of space launch is 20 or 30 times the cost price”, he added. The revenue from the contracts can then be reinvested in the Brazilian space program and in the maintenance of the launch center infrastructure.
It is still too early to know which companies will be interested in launching their rockets from Brazil. SpaceX will not be one of them, said Marco Antonio Chamon, CEO of the Brazilian Space Agency, at the public hearing.
Elon Musk’s company “has no interest in launching from Alcântara,” he said. “It has its own rocket launch facilities.”
Chinese satellite manufacturer SpaceSail aims to start providing satellite internet in Brazil by 2026, competing directly with Musk’s Starlink, and signed a memorandum of understanding on the eve of President Xi Jinping’s visit to Brazil last month.
Brazilian Telecommunications Secretary Hermano Tercius said in November that Brazil had offered the Shanghai-based company the use of Alcântara, but Communications Minister Juscelino Filho later said the government had made no such offer.
