According to Ricardo Galvão, who was fired from the agency in 2019, Starlink satellites are not suitable for monitoring the forest
Former director of Inpe (National Institute for Space Research) Ricardo Galvão said that the announcement of the federal government’s partnership with Elon Musk’s Starlink for an Amazon monitoring program is “president political scene game” Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
“Starlink asked permission to launch 30,000 satellites for the Federal Communications Commission in the US, and NASA protested. NASA put up several protests, which Starlink did not respond to because these satellites that they are putting [em órbita] will pose a huge danger to the satellites that exist in space”, said Galvão in an interview with GloboNews on Friday (May 21, 2022).
“Who studied this? Did they call the Brazilian space agency, some specialist? They did not. It’s just a political scene game by the president”, he added.
Also according to the former president of Inpe, Starlink satellites will not help monitor deforestation in the Amazon, as they are only used to provide internet signal.
When he announced the partnership in the twitterMusk said Starlink will connect 19,000 schools in rural areas and do environmental monitoring of the Amazon.
There was no bidding for the contracting of Starlink.
The federal government has a satellite monitoring system operating in the Amazon. It is operated by Inpe, checks and issues alerts in real time. Bolsonaro, however, questions the published data and reduced the institute’s budget.
Galvão was fired from the board of Inpe in 2019, amid disagreements with the President of the Republic, who criticized the physicist for having released data on deforestation in the Amazon. A report made public by the institute showed that deforestation in the region increased by 88% in June 2019, compared to the same period last year.
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