Report: At Least 10 Companies Interested in Launching from Alcântara

The Brazilian newspaper O Estado do Maranhão (The State of Maranhão) reports that there is considerable domestic and international interest in launching from that nation’s Alcântara Space Center.

The Brazilian Space blog reproduced the study here. Below is an excerpt in English translated from Portuguese via Google Translate.

At least 10 companies have already responded to the public call formalized by the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) for exploration and commercial use of the rocket launch base at the Alcântara Space Center (CEA), which started in late May and will run until 31 July.

The national and foreign companies that submitted their proposals are interested in suborbital or orbital launches of non-military satellites.

The announcement with the public call – and of international scope – to which the State had access, highlights that the process has the “purpose of promoting the development of space activities of national interest”….

The information that at least 10 companies have shown interest in the commercial exploitation of CEA, in the first two weeks of the launch of the public notice, is from the Maranhão bench in the National Congress.

Alcântara Space Center is located close to the equator in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. The spaceport can be used for both equatorial and polar orbit launches.

Last year, the United States and Brazil signed a technology safeguards agreement designed to protect American launch vehicles and satellites that might be launched from Alcântara.

The spaceport has never hosted an orbital launch. Efforts by Brazil to develop domestic boosters over the past several decades.

Alcântara Cyclone Space, a joint venture of Brazil and Ukraine, had planned to launch satellites into orbit from the site using the latter’s Cyclone 4 boosters. The Brazilian government pulled the plug on the program in 2015 after a decade of delays.