Reaching the Stars: Latam's Emerging Space Powers Sputnik | |
go to original October 23, 2016 |
Launch of PeruSat-1 (Flickr/Defense Ministry of Peru Latin America)
Argentina and Brazil are Latin America’s leading space-going countries, but Peru, Venezuela and Mexico are already breathing down their necks. Sputnik discussed this issue with Gustavo Henríquez director of the PerúSat-1 program that allowed Peru to orbit its first observation satellite.
“Argentina and Brazil are hands down leaders here and have come a long way. The Argentines have successfully launched their first telecoms satellite, ArSat-1 [October 16, 2014] and the Brazilians are also pretty much advanced technologically thanks to their cooperation with China, mainly in the field satellite imaging,” Gustavo Henríquez said.
He added that apart from infrastructure “a critical mass of specialists and forward-looking technology experts” was a fundamental factor in the development of a country’s space industry.
Gustavo Henríquez also emphasized that Peru was now in the forefront of the international effort to improve the quality and scope of satellite imaging of the Earth.
“Our satellite is the most powerful in the region but we know that we are still years behind our regional leaders [Argentina and Brazil] in other space-related areas,” he admitted.
Gustavo Henríquez said that Latin American countries were not competing against each other.
“We are cooperating on a country-to-country basis, just like Argentina and Brazil do. But now that Peru has this major satellite in orbit we looking for avenues of cooperation with countries that are of paramount importance to us,” he continued.
Venezuela and China are now working on a new generation of telecommunications and observation satellites and Mexico started using satellite imaging decades ago.
Read the rest at Sputnik
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