The explosion at the Alcântara launch center (MA) left 21 dead and marked Brazil’s aerospace history
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Summary
The explosion of the VLS-1 V03 rocket at the Alcântara launch center in 2003 caused the death of 21 technicians, halted the Brazilian space program and generated losses of 36 million reais.
The first commercial flight of a rocket in Brazil should take place this Friday afternoon, after the launch was postponed at the start of the week. Korean company Innospace postponed the launch day to ensure sufficient time for “component replacement following the detection of an anomaly in the first stage oxidizer system cooling device during the final inspection procedure.”
The Hanbit-Nano’s journey into space would represent a revival of the Brazilian space program, which still lives on the sidelines of the accident that occurred at the Alcântara launch center, in Maranhão, on August 22, 2003, when an accidental combustion process destroyed the Brazilian VLS-1 V03 rocket, killing 21 civilian technicians who were then part of the Brazilian space program.
Operation São Luís, as the mission is called, aimed to place the meteorological microsatellite Satec, from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and the nanosatellite UNOSAT, from the University of North Paraná (UENP) in a circular equatorial orbit, at an altitude of 750 km.
In an interview with Rádio Senado, former astronaut and now senator Marcos Pontes (PL-SP) deplored the episode in question: “It wasn’t even the launch yet (scheduled for August 25, 2003), there was the preparation of the satellite launcher inside the assembly building and I lost twenty-one friends there,” he declared. “We have to learn from accidents. So I’m sure this accident taught the institute itself a lot.”
The cause, according to an Air Force command report published in 2004, was attributed to an “untimely activation” of a gear that started the rocket engine. It also appears that “latent failures” and “deterioration of working conditions” contributed to the explosion.
The Alcântara fire generated losses estimated at the time at 36 million reais. As for the dead, as Revista reports Search Fapesp, “11 had higher education and 10 were mid-level technicians, aged 20 to 51. »
On the Memorial da Democracia website, a virtual museum managed by the Lula Institute and the Fundação Perseu Abramo, it is indicated that the victims were buried with military honors and that their respective families were compensated in the amount of R$100,000, in addition to a monthly pension proportional to the salary received.
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