Eye Over the Amazon--New Satellite Imagery
11/1/99
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Title: Eye over the Amazon
The jungle around the Rio Jurua
Source: BBC News
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 1, 1999
Byline: Dr David Whitehouse, BBC News Online Science Editor
The Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology has released the
first image taken from the joint China-Brazil earth monitoring
satellite, CBERS-1.
Its wide-field camera shows a portion of the Amazon rain forest some
300 by 300 km (186 miles by 186 miles).
The image was obtained on 21 October and shows the jungle around the
Rio Jurua, a tributary of the Amazon.
Brazilian scientists hope that CBERS-1 will make a significant
contribution to environmental monitoring in the Amazon region which
is under pressure from fires and deforestation.
When it is not observing Brazil, the satellite will be looking at
China. Eventually, it is hoped that the satellite will take images of
other countries for fee-paying customers.
Busy times for the Brazilian space effort
CBERS-1 was launched on 14 October by a Chinese Long March 4-B
rocket, along with another satellite called SACI-1.
Unfortunately, engineers were not been able to establish contact with
SACI-1 after launch.
With Nasa's help, Brazilian engineers did locate it and now believe
that it did reach its proper orbit but that it failed to deploy its
solar panels properly.
Rescuing the satellite will take several months as its batteries have
been completely drained. Only a tiny amount of sunlight can fall on
the still-folded solar panels so charging the batteries up again will
take a long time.
These are busy times for the Brazilian space effort. It hopes to
launch SACI-2 later this month.