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Satellite Launch Delayed

by Virginia Silveira
Sao Paulo GAZETA MERCANTIL 13 Feb 96 p C3

Sao Jose dos Campos--Launching of the second Brazilian data collection satellite (SCD-2), which was scheduled for April of this year, has been delayed until December. Publication of the call for bids on a contract for the rocket that will launch the satellite was delayed for almost six months, and according to an estimate by Marco Barbosa, director of the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), it will now be issued in March. The SCD-2, development of which was completed in August of last year, was designed to ensure the continuity of the data collection services provided by the first satellite in the series--SCD-1--whose useful life is almost at an end. That satellite completed three years in orbit last week, but its subsystems, chiefly the battery, have been showing signs of wearing out since July 1995. To keep the SCD-1 in operation for at least three more months, scientists at the INPE have decided to use its equipment only for domestic purposes.

"One of the SCD-1's onboard computers has been disconnected, and the data collection transponder is activated only when the satellite is flying over Brazilian territory," according to Janio Kono, manager of the Complete Brazilian Space Mission (MECB). Although those precautionary measures help increase the satellite's useful life, the INPE expects the battery powering SCD-1's subsystems to hold out for only three more months.

"When the battery is exhausted, the satellite will be able to collect data only during the daylight hours using energy captured from the sun by its solar cells," the manager said. Another alternative being considered by the INPE to avoid interrupting its data collection services to users of the subsystem calls for using a foreign satellite, possibly the Tirus satellite belonging to the French Argos system. Within 90 days, according to Kono, SCD-1 will be operating at only 50 percent of its data collection capacity.

SCD-2 is part of the MECB program, which calls for building four data collection satellites and two remote sensing satellites. Construction of the second satellite has absorbed investments on the order of $13 million. The next satellite in the series will be SCD-2A, a replica of SCD-2, and it is being built to ensure use of the Brazilian Satellite Launch Vehicle (VLS). At first, the VLS was supposed to have launched SCD-2, but the rocket project experienced various delays because of a lack of funds, and its launch has been postponed until mid-1997. Most of the funds budgeted for development of the VLS in 1995 did not arrive until December, and that caused further delays in the timetable for launching the vehicle. The project received $12 million in 1995, and it should be given an appropriation of from 8 million to 10 million reals for this year, a sum that is necessary to complete the rocket. According to Air Force General Reginaldo Santos, director of the Aerospace Technical Center (CTA), the release of funds in December helped expedite the importation of electronic components meeting military specifications. According to him, purchase of those components was also facilitated by Brazil's adherence to the MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime), an organization comprising 25 countries responsible for overseeing the manufacture and exportation of dual technology products (those with civilian and military applications).

The INPE has acquired 250 new environmental and meteorological data collection platforms (PCD's) for installation in remote locations around the country. The PCD's cost $2.5 million and were imported from the U.S. firm Handar. Brazilian satellite SCD-1 is currently receiving data from 52 PCD's and retransmitting those data to the INPE's receiving center in Cuiaba, Mato Grosso. The data are sent to the mission center in Cachoeira Paulista, Sao Paulo, where they are processed and distributed to users. About 200 PCD's will be installed in the Amazon region by the end of this year to monitor hydroelectric plants in the region. The platforms will be used by the National Water and Electric Power Department (DNAEE). According to the INPE, another 50 PCD's will be installed in South American countries that are potential users of the data collection service offered by Brazilian satellites.

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