South Korean aerospace and defense company Innospace will be the first private business to send up a rocket from the Alcantara launch center in northern Brazil in December, Brazilian Space Agency President Carlos Moura told Reuters on Friday.
Innospace, which plans to make low-cost small satellite launches more accessible from multiple locations around the globe, is still developing its rocket and will test it with an experimental launch from Alcantara, Moura said in an interview.
The South Korean start-up is developing a hybrid rocket powered by both solid and liquid fuel and will test the vehicle in a suborbital flight that will carry an inertial navigation system payload for the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) that operates the Alcantara base, the Brazilian agency said.
Brazil is hoping to get a slice of the rapidly growing small satellite launch market by offering its base in Alcantara, whose location on the Atlantic coast by the equator reduces fuel costs as satellites do not have to travel so far to get into orbit.
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