Fostering a Sustainable Space Ecosystem in Brazil: Insights from the Civil, Commercial, and Military Integration
Abstract
The New Space is imposing a global reorganization in the space sector, leaving national programs to coordinate civil, commercial, and military interests across the space power triad under governance arrangements. This article asks how the Brazilian space ecosystem is articulated across the three domains and which governance mechanisms could close structural gaps that might erode its long-term economic sustainability. The evidence base combines 16 semi-structured interviews with government, industry, and academic experts, documentary analysis, and a modified Space Technology Ladder. Three findings hold together. Public funding remains the ecosystem’s primary energy source, while horizontal integration across the three domains stays uneven. The civil program, historically undercapitalized, is the most tractable instrument available for inducing commercial activity, and currently the most underused. The Brazilian program has not settled on a primary international partner for space development, and this distributed pattern limits the capability transfer available from any single bilateral relationship. We frame these findings as structural decoupling at four institutional levels and argue that addressing it requires repositioning civil procurement as a market-shaping instrument rather than a residual budget line.