There's an unearthly market blooming in the Brazilian jungle.
Aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin, along with small rocket builder Vector, have expressed interest in launching from an old rocket complex on Brazil's Atlantic coast.
The Alcantara base sits about 140 miles south of the Earth's equator, making it a prime location for launching satellites, a $260 billion business. From this spot, certain satellites can be launched more efficiently than from spaceports in the U.S.
The dormant military base "makes total sense" to be used "for launching large satellites with big rockets into geosynchronous orbits" (also known as GEO), Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, told CNBC.
These GEO satellites, which circle the globe tens of thousands of miles away, orbit at the equator to provide maximum coverage for services such as communications or broadband.
Launching from the equator itself, therefore, is advantageous because it requires less fuel. A launch from a latitude much farther north – such as NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida or Vandenberg Air Force Base in California – requires rockets sending satellites to GEO to change direction in flight to reach the equator. Sometimes called "bootlegging," that process requires firing a rocket's engines multiple times to angle into position.
Launching those same satellites from Alcantara would save as much as 20 percent more fuel compared to a location like Florida, McDowell estimated.
Similar savings would be seen for launches to equatorial low Earth orbit (LEO), McDowell noted. The case for Boeing and Lockheed Martin "makes sense," McDowell said, due to the large size of GEO-bound satellites.
Vector, on the other hand, wants to use its small rockets to tap a new equatorial LEO market by launching dozens of small satellites. The company's Vector-R rocket, which is nearing its first orbital launch in July, is about one sixth the size of the often-watched SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. At less than $3 million per launch, Vector wants to use its rocket to tap into the rapidly-growing microsatellite industry.
Traditionally, equatorial LEO has been a minuscule portion of the satellite market. Small satellites are usually destined for orbits running over the Earth's poles. Reaching those polar orbits means "an equatorial launch site isn't an advantage," McDowell said.
Vector CEO Jim Cantrell thinks the demand for equatorial LEO is already here. Last month, Cantrell expressed even more enthusiasm than Boeing and Lockheed Martin when he told CNBC his company "is very interested in the opportunity" due to the fuel efficiency advantage.
"From a satellite launch perspective, there are many who want to launch into equatorial LEO," Cantrell said, in a follow-up interview. "We have seven customers at present that are looking for this. And [launching aboard a small rocket] is one of those services no one seems able to provide, as these customers are definitely not able to find a rideshare opportunity."
These are "American and European customers" for Vector, Cantrell said, and include both start-ups and established customers. Of those looking to launch with Vector, communications satellites "are probably 75 percent of the demand," while remote sensing and imaging satellites are the remaining 25 percent, Cantrell said. The Vector-R rocket can lift about 80 kilograms into equatorial LEO, the rocketeer noted.
