Rather than buy a bird and get China to send it on its Long March into the sky, Brazil has decided to get together with the Chinese to develop the bird as well; the $150m project involves developing and launching a satellite by 1996: the pact, with the Chinese National Space Agency, sets out a timetable for building and launching two satellites, one of which must be in orbit by October 1996; they will be developed jointly by Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research and China’s space agency with 30% of the $150m project to be paid for by Brazil, using proceeds from the sale of state companies, the Brazilian news agency reported; the aim is to cut the cost of using the US Landsat and French Spot satellites to obtain data for research in agriculture, forestry, geology, geography and the environment – Brazil spends about $2m on year on the data; Brazil successfully test launched a VS-40 rocket in April designed to put satellites into orbit.
