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politically menacing environment.
INPE’s director, Clezio De Nardin, ac-
knowledges that his institute is in trouble. In
an interview with Science, he says INPE needs
at least twice its current operating budget of
92 million reais ($18 million) a year to fulfill
its missions. But he blames the cuts on Bra-
zil’s economic problems, not on politics. “I
don’t believe any ruler in good conscience
would act to destroy an institu-
tion that produces essential infra-
structure for its own country,” De
Nardin says. “Especially because
defunding the space sector will
have consequences in society for
decades.”
In an email to Science, Brazil’s
Ministry of Science, Technology and
Innovation (MCTI) pointed to a few
positive signs: This year, INPE’s dis-
cretionary funding went up by 33%,
bringing it back to 2019 levels, and
grants from the National Fund for
Scientific and Technological Devel-
opment (FNDCT) will add an addi-
tional boost.
But researchers say the amount
of grant support is uncertain, and
the extra funding won’t be nearly
enough to reverse years of decline.
By now, many staffers have become
demoralized, says Gino Genaro,
a senior satellite technologist at
INPE: “People are distressed with-
out knowing what to do and what
the future will hold.”INPE WAS FOUNDED in 1961, when
the space race was in full swing
and the Cold War at its peak. In-
spired by a visit from Soviet cosmo-
naut Yuri Gagarin, then-President
Jânio Quadros embraced an idea
from the Brazilian Interplanetary
Society to launch a national space
institute. In its early years, INPE
created and consolidated research
and postgraduate programs in
meteorology, astrophysics, and re-
mote sensing.
In the 1970s, it became the first
space agency in any country to
monitor forests using satellite data,
obtained by the U.S. Landsat Pro-
gram. In 1989, the agency launched
the Brazilian Amazon Deforesta-
tion Satellite Monitoring Program
(PRODES), which provides yearly
and historical deforestation trends
for the world’s largest rainforest. In
2004, INPE added a system namedReal-Time Deforestation Detection (DETER),
which uses real-time images from a variety
of satellites, some of them developed partly
in Brazil, to send daily and monthly updates
of fires and other causes of forest loss to en-
forcement officials.
Data from PRODES and DETER helped
Brazil create and enforce policies that were
key to reducing annual deforestation in the
Amazon by 82% between 2004 and 2014.
Both programs are “fundamental for under-
standing the agricultural expansion in Braziland carbon emissions from deforestation in
the Amazon,” says Douglas Morton, a re-
mote sensing specialist at NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center. Morton says researchers
worldwide prize INPE’s data, which it made
publicly available on the internet in 2003, a
pioneering step that the United States and
other countries would follow. The institute is
also an important training center for remote
sensing scientists, Morton adds.
Another source of pride at INPE is the
Integration and Testing Laboratory (LIT),
which assembles satellites. The
only lab of its kind in the Southern
Hemisphere, LIT has tested and de-
veloped many satellites in the past
35 years, most in partnership with
other countries. The most success-
ful and long-standing project was a
collaboration with China to launch
six imaging satellites, the first one in
1999, that gave Brazil its own satel-
lite views for the first time. Two are
still used today to monitor fires, de-
forestation, and land use.
“INPE is certainly one of the
most important research institu-
tions in Latin America,” says com-
puter scientist Gilberto Câmara,
a career researcher who led the
institute from 2006 to 2013. Dur-
ing Câmara’s tenure, in 2010, Bra-
zil invested $13 million in a new
Cray XT6 supercomputer, for use by
INPE teams and researchers else-
where in Brazil. Nicknamed Tupã,
after an Indigenous South Ameri-
can god of thunder, it was one of
the 30 most powerful computers in
the world at the time—and it was
hailed as another milestone for Bra-
zilian science.
But the string of successes
wouldn’t last.INPE’S FORTUNES TURNED about a
decade ago, during the first term
of leftist President Dilma Rousseff.
Federal support for science, includ-
ing at INPE, suffered in a mael-
strom of economic and political
troubles. The turmoil culminated
in Rousseff ’s impeachment and
removal in 2016, and Bolsonaro’s
election in 2018.
The decline accelerated after
Bolsonaro took office, despite his
campaign promises to prioritize
science. His government cut M C-
TI’s overall budget by 35% in the
first 3 years of his administration,
to 8.3 billion reais ($1.7 billion).
Despite a partial recovery this
year, after Congress banned the01234567M2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022Amazon monitoring budget(millions of reais)20112012201320142015 20162017 20182019202002505007501000StaffResearchers Technicians and administrative sta 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022050100150200250MTotal budget (millions of reais)A one-time increase
in 2017 allowed
INPE to contract the
launch of the
Amazonia-1 satellite.After a record low in
2021, INPE saw its
budget increase to
92.3 million reais
($18 million) this year.INPE’s satellite assembly hall in 2020. Today, little
is happening in the facility as funds have dried up.NEWS | FEATURESInstitute in free fall
Once a beacon of Brazil’s scientific prowess, the National Institute for Space
Research (INPE) has suffered major losses in its overall budget (top) and
funding for two world-renowned rainforest monitoring programs (bottom)
over the past decade. Its staff has shrunk by almost one-quarter (middle).