The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) is Brazil’s main space technology organization, based in São José dos Campos and overseen by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Founded in 1961, it builds and operates satellites, runs the country’s deforestation monitoring programs, and supports engineering and Earth science research. Its oldest forest-monitoring program, PRODES, has tracked annual deforestation rates from satellite imagery since 1988, and the data behind it has fed roughly 1,200 scientific articles in indexed journals.
Key facts
- Country: Brazil
- Founded: 1961
- Headquarters: São José dos Campos
- Type: research institute
- Parent organisation: Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation
- Website: http://www.inpe.br/
Origins and founding
On August 3, 1961, President Jânio Quadros signed a decree creating the Organizing Group for the National Commission on Space Activities (COGNAE), placed under the National Research Council (CNPq). COGNAE operated for a decade before being extinguished; on April 22, 1971, a new decree created the Institute for Space Research (INPE) in its place, again subordinated to CNPq.
On August 3, 2021, INPE marked six decades since its inauguration. The anniversary came amid a reduced budget and uncertain futures for several research projects.
Structure and research
INPE’s work is organized into eight major areas of research and development, regrouped into three general departments: Earth sciences; engineering, technology and space sciences; and infrastructure and applied research.
Within the engineering and space sciences department, INPE has been developing EQUARS, the Equatorial Atmosphere Research Satellite, designed to collect atmospheric data over the equatorial region.
INPE’s satellite program includes the China Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) series, jointly operated with CRESDA. CBERS-4A, launched in 2019, is the sixth satellite in the program.
Monitoring the Amazon
PRODES has assessed annual deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon from satellite imagery since 1988. A companion system, the Real-Time Deforestation Detection System (DETER), has issued daily alerts on areas losing forest cover since 2004.
INPE’s deforestation monitoring draws on five satellites: Landsat 8 and 9 from NASA and USGS, the European Space Agency’s Sentinel, and Brazil and China’s own CBERS 4 and 4A. Using this imagery, PRODES estimated that 9,001 km² of Amazon forest were deforested between August 2022 and July 2023, a figure 22.3% lower than the previous year.
In March 2019, Brazil’s environment minister pushed for a private satellite tracking system to replace INPE’s monitoring, estimated to cost at least $8.5 million using imagery from the U.S. company Planet.
Wider impact
INPE helped build a geoprocessing culture in Brazil that has grown into an industry worth R$15 billion per year.
Data sources
Where it appears
- Amazon’s “Lungs” May Already Exhale More Carbon Than They Inhale November 8, 2026
Data updated: 2026-11-08