NASA Launches New Era of Cooperation with Brazil

Sao Jose dos Campos, SP

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden with INPE’s Director Gilberto Camara

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden speaking to a group of 70 public and private school students

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden touched down at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in Sao Jose dos Campos to launch a new era of space cooperation between the United States and Brazil and to awaken the urge to explore new frontiers among Brazilian science students.  Noting how shared knowledge and learning from each other on space issues can help develop the bilateral realtionship, Bolden noted that  “space exploration is still very important because it enables us to learn so much more about our own fragile planet and all of humanity.”

With the INPE’s state-of-the-art facilities as backdrop, Director Bolden held discussions with the Brazilian Space Agency’s Director Dr. Marco Antonio Raupp and INPE’s Director Gilberto Camara before signing two cooperation agreements: the first to work jointly on measuring global precipitation (GPM) and the second to study the planet’s ozone layer.  The GPM agreement is an initiative by NASA to use data obtained from a variety of satellites to study global rainfall patterns as a means to monitor climate change and other meteorological conditions.  Studying the ozone layer will enable scientists to gain increased understanding on how the layer works in shielding solar radiation and maintaining global temperatures. 

Bolden toured INPE’s world-class Integration and Testing Laboratory (LIT) where satellites are subjected to extremes in temperature, vibration and radiation as what occurred for the Aquarius SAC-D satellite, a tri-lateral project in which a satellite carrying NASA equipment was constructed in Argentina and then tested in Brazil before being launched from the U.S.  Aquarius is currently in orbit measuring the salinity of the oceans, an indicator for global climate change.   

Bolden rounded out his visit with an inspirational presentation to a group of 70 public and private school students, which was also broadcast live on the Internet and attracted over 3,000 viewers.  Bolden captivated the students with his personal stories of flying the space shuttle, putting the Hubble telescope in space, and performing experiments in zero-gravity.  On Earth and in space, Bolden told the students, there is no substitute for study, hard work and the confidence to accept failure only as the next step to success.

For more photos of the event, click here.

Click here to watch the video of the visit.