The Atlantic Spaceport, the space base for low-cost launches planned for Azores, has been green-lit and “should involve an investment of around 300 million euros”, says the President of the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Paulo Ferrão.
The Atlantic Spaceport is one of the structures that will integrate the Azores International Research Center (AIR Center). The goal of this project is to develop an international cooperation platform, dedicated to integrated research in the areas of climate, earth observation, energy, space and oceans, involving Portugal, Brazil, Canada, USA, South Africa, Angola, Morocco and other European states.
The signature of the AIR Center founding agreement is slated for April 2017, in a summit to be held at Azores by the Science Ministries of Portugal and Brazil.
FCT has submitted a preliminary document to discussion by the national scientific community about the project. It defends “a new debate on a multilateral cooperation approach to science, for an integrated approach to space, climate change, earth and ocean sciences in the Atlantic, with emerging methods of processing scientific data. ”
This document was created with the contribution of scientists from Portuguese institutions, companies and universities (Azores, Porto, Minho, Algarve and Lisbon), as well as from the European Space Agency, NASA, the US Department of Energy and other American universities, such as MIT, the University of Texas and Carnegie Mellon University.
Read the Portuguese article at Expresso (PDF version) aicep Portugal Global Online (November 5, 2016)
