The Argentine National Commission of Space Activities, known as Conae for its Spanish-language acronym, is preparing two satellite missions including one in cooperation with Brazil, a Conae official told Latin Business Daily.
“Conae has developed four missions, all of them satellite cooperation for scientific applications and all with NASA,” Carlos Daniel Caruso, chief of the ongoing SabiaMar satellite project said recently by telephone.
Sac-A, a 132-pound satellite, was launched from the Space Shuttle in 1998 while Sac-B, weighing 400 pounds, was launched from a rocket in Virginia in 1996, preceding Sac-A.
Sac-C, a half-ton satellite, was launched from the U.S. West Coast in 2000 while the fourth, the Sac-D Aquarius weighing 3,000 pounds, was launched in 2011 from a rocket also on the U.S. West Coast, he said.
“In all of these missions the cooperation between NASA and Conae was similar,” Caruso said. While Nasa was in charge of the launches, Conae took if from there and carried out the rest of the operation. In the case of Sac-D Aquarius, the NASA contribution was $300 million while that of Argentina was $70 million. Brazil, France and Italy also made contributions toward the total cost of $400 million, he added.
The next satellites, named Saocom, weigh 6,600 pounds and are to be launched in pairs. “For those satellites, Conae has already started the process of contracting and has already contracted a U.S.-based company named Space X.”
SabiaMar, the Brazilian-Argentine Satellite Sea Information, is a project of the two countries that seeks to learn more about the oceans through the use of 1,500-pound satellites.
The Argentine space agency has had mixed results. In the case of the Sac-B, the launcher failed so the satellite only had a useful life of one day. In the case of the Sac-A, the mission was planned for an orbit of nine months, and it was equipped with a commercial camera that worked well. Both were useful for training among other scientific purposes.
In the case of Sac-C, the satellite had several cameras and was used to help detect illegal fishing operations. It also helped to follow up the development of crops and to study advances of land desertification.
The Sac-D Aquarius provided information about climate change and also data related to the ocean including surface winds, sizes of waves, and detailed information on the Argentine portion of the South Pole, among other information.
All information from the satellites is shared with the scientific community. The Argentina space agency has separately done work on launchers that continues. Its assets include a space agency center near the city of Cordoba, in central Argentina.
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