VLS - Veiculo Lancador de Satellites

Brazil has been attempting to develop a satellite launch vehicle, the VLS, for Veiculo Lancador de Satellites, for some time. The VLS is a four-stage rocket using solid propellants. Much of the technology for the VLS was derived from early Brazilian Sonda-class sounding rockets.

To conclude the process of qualification of the Launch vehicle of Satellites (Vls-1), they are necessary four launchings. The first one was carried through in November of 1997, from the Center of Launching of Alcântara. Although an imperfection in the first period of training to have engaged the mission of the vehicle, the test was considered positive by allowing the validation of important components, including the control system. Two more launchings were foreseen.

Brazil's plans to become the ninth country capable of designing, developing and launching a space vehicle (after the US, Russia, Ukraine, France, China, India, Israel, and Japan) suffered a setback on 02 November 1997 when the first Brazilian-made space launch vehicle, the 63-ft. (19 m) tall four-stage Satellite Launch Vehicle was lost about 65 seconds after launch (7:25am EST) when one of its four solid-propellant first-stage motors failed to ignite. Parts of the booster and its payload, the 113 kg (250-lbs) Brazilian-made environmental / agricultural Data Gathering Satellite-2a (SCD-2A, SCD-1 having been launched in 1993 on a Pegasus) fell offshore into the sea.

Despite the failure, Brazil pressed forward to build three more prototype VLS boosters. Brazilian aerospace officials were forced to remotely destroy another rocket in 1999 when it developed problems minutes after takeoff.

On 23 August 2003 the VLS exploded days before its scheduled launch into space, killing at least 16 people and injuring 20 others. The explosion destroyed the Brazilian VLS-1 V-03 rocket designed to carry two satellites into orbit. One of the four main boosters on the rocket ignited, causing a massive explosion that sent a thick plume of smoke in the air over the Alcantara Launch Center, located near Brazil's sparsely-populated northern coast. Officials say the blast occurred without warning and caused the launching pad to collapse, killing civilian technicians who were concluding several days of tests ahead of the VLS rocket's launch scheduled for next week. Damage was limited to the launching area. The rocket, valued at more than two-million dollars, was to carry two satellites, which would have made Brazil the first Latin American nation to launch a satellite into space on its own. The Aug. 22 explosion killed 21 people after an engine ignited by mistake while on its launch pad. The rocket exploded at its jungle base of Alcantara, in the northeastern state of Maranhao, Brazil.

A decade later, Brazil began to revive its stalled Satellite Launch Vehicle (VLS-1) project, which had been put on hold after the 2003 pad explosion. Russia was helping Brazil to complete the VLS-1 project using Russian technology under a previous agreement between the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB).

Besides becoming Brazil able to launch the satellites of small transport, also making possible the participation in the international market in this segment, is foreseen in the PNAE the development of other vehicles of the same classroom of the Launch vehicle of Satellites (Vls-1), currently in qualification process.

The Vls-1 is a conventional vehicle, with four periods of training, launched of a terrestrial platform. They had been invested since 1980 about 280 million dollar, including the expenses with the sounding rockets and all the necessary infrastructure to its development.

In the take-off, the length of the vehicle is of 19 meters, with mass of 50 tons and the the 100 push arrives km. The initial propulsion is guaranteed by engines propolente solid, in all the periods of training, with total mass of 41 tons. This thrower has capacity to place in circular orbit, of 250 the 1000 km of altitude, the 350 satellites of 100 kg.

The miniaturization of the systems embarked in the satellites has made possible the considerable reduction of its weight and volume, having given opening to the use of lesser launch vehicles that the Vls-1. To take care of to the missions of injection in orbit of satellites of until 100Kg (microssatélites), he is being developed the VLM - a simpler vehicle and that also it could be used in the launching of suborbitais scientific experiments of a bigger transport that the made possible one for the sounding rockets.