S. Korean rocket is launched from Brazil’s Alcântara base

The Brazilian Space Program took another important step last weekend with the launch of South Korean rocket HANBIT-TLV from the Alcântara Launch Center, in Maranhão state, Northeast Brazil.

This was the center’s 500th launch. “The vehicle carried an all-Brazilian payload on a 4-minute and 33-second flight,” the Air Force added.

Dubbed Astrolábio (“Astrolabe”), the operation stems from the partnership between Brazil’s aerospace science and technology department DCTA and South Korean company Innospace.

“This is groundbreaking, as we will be able to host a number of commercial operations at Alcântara, placing us among the world’s top space centers and ushering us into this huge huge space market, which grows more and more each day,” said Air Lieutenant Brigadier Maurício Augusto Silveira de Medeiros, DCTA’s director-general.

The launch as well as the partnerships, he went on, are expected to result in a “series of benefits, as revenues are brought to the city of Alcântara, the state of Maranhão, and Brazil.”

In a note, the Air Force stated that “the success of this binational launch is further proof that the center is fully capable—both from the operational and administrative points of view—to carry out domestic and foreign rocket launches at virtually any time of the year, with precision and safety.”

Carlos Augusto Teixeira de Moura, head of the country’s space agency AEB, restated that the launch center was originally conceived to house not only the Brazilian space program, but also other operators.

“We have materialized the ideal from the 80s, as we now have an international private operator working here, which offers us a chance to play an active role in the international space transport market,” he argued.