MOSCOW. Nov 16 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Federal Space Agency is going to expand its cooperation with the Brazilian counterpart AEB in a whole bunch of large-scale projects, Vyacheslav Dyachenko, the agency's press secretary, told Interfax-Military News Agency Tuesday.
"Head of the Federal Space Agency Anatoly Perminov will visit Brazil one of these days to discuss future cooperation between the two countries," he said.
He recalled that the Russian-Brazilian partnership in space was declared in 1997 intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in peaceful use of space.
"According to Perminov, there are both objective and subjective prerequisites for such a cooperation," he added.
He said that it was Russia who came to help Brazil after the VLS accident at the Alcantara spaceport. Russian specialists worked in the accident zone and suggested a number of solutions to prevent such accidents in future, which were found very reasonable by the Brazilian side. The launch site is being reconstructed and the VLS launcher elaborated with these suggestions of Russians in mind.
The Federal Space Agency spokesman referred to the joint development of a remote Earth probing satellite as the most important of the Russian-Brazilian programs, as it is critical for monitoring of woodcutting in Amazon forests.
"These satellites also allow controlling the harvest. Moreover, they can be employed for tracking objects moving in the country," he added.
Besides, he said that the two countries are going to develop interaction between their scientists, and jointly develop and operate a competitive launch vehicle, which the Brazilian spaceport suites best.
According to the press secretary, the cooperation of Russia and Brazil will take into account the international obligations of the two, including those concerning non-proliferation of missile and rocket technologies.