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19 killed as space rocket explodes

Posted on: Saturday, 23 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

NINETEEN people died last night when a Brazilian space rocket undergoing final tests exploded on its jungle launch pad. A further 20 people were seriously injured.

Both civilians and military personnel were among the casualties, according to Raimundo de Souza, a public security spokesman for the northeastern state of Maranhao.

The explosion destroyed the VLS-3 rocket, which was undergoing tests at the Alcantara launch centre near Sao Luis, as well as the satellites it was due to carry into space. Reports said the explosion was heard dozens of miles away in the town.

The (pounds) 1.5m rocket was scheduled to be sent into space next week by Brazil's National Space Research Institute.

Last night's explosion dealt the worst blow so far to Brazil and its effort to become the first Latin American nation to put a rocket in space. Two previous attempts also ended in catastrophe.

The rocket was sitting on the launch pad at the Alcantara space base, situated on a jungle peninsula jutting into the Atlantic ocean in the Amazon region, when the accident happened.

Experts had been working on the project since the beginning of July, and the rocket was going through final tests.

The rocket was to have put two small satellites, carrying positioning equipment, a communications transmitter, and energy source, into a into low orbit about 470 miles above the earth less than eight minutes after blast-off.

First word of the accident reached Brasilia, the capital, at the same time as the head of the Brazilian Space Agency was holding a news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart about a deal to launch Ukrainian Cyclone rockets from Alcantara.

"This sad accident should not and will not influence relations between Brazil and Ukraine," said Valeriy Komarov, head of the Ukrainian Space Agency.

Brazil has aspirations for Alcantara to become a major international commercial satellite launch centre.

The base is close to the equator, allowing rockets to use less fuel to reach orbit and carry larger payloads because they catch a ride on the earth's centrifugal forces.

Brazil's military rulers first planned to plunge the country into the space race in the 1970s, appropriating 153,200 acres for a launch complex in a tiny seventeenth century town.

Funding on space has been meagre in Brazil recently and the disaster will be a massive blow for the country's nascent space industry.

The launch was also expected to provide much-needed financial relief for the area around the base.

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