Other Countries

South Korea (Repulbic of Korea) has a major initiative which appears to be aimed at designing and building mini satellites. Their past missions inlcude FIMS/SPEAR (built with SSTL) and their mission (using a Korean launcher) crashed. They are currently working on a near IR sky survey mission.

South Korea has invested a large amount of money in building a launch pad located on one of the Southern Islands. The relevant agences are Korean Aerospace Research Institute KARI and Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute KASI.

Brazil Brazil has had a bit of checquered history in rocketry and almost no history in space based astronomy. The Alcantara launch center is only 2 degrees south of the Equator (better than SHAR of India, located 14 degrees North of the Equator). The Brazilian space program involves a high degree of collaboration with China and primarily focused on remote sensing.

The only astronomy project which we are aware of is MIRAX . MIRAX aims to observe the Galactic center and bulge regions in the energy range, 2--200 keV (essentially using two sets of coded aperture masks instruments). The total mass is 200 kg and the consumption is 240 W. The estimated cost is pegged at $10M. It seems to be under development since 2002.

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