Alessandra Peruzzo
Reporter Agência Brasil

São José dos Campos (São Paulo) – When Brazil's first astronaut, Air Force lieutenant colonel Marco Pontes, goes into space at the end of March aboard a Russian rocket, he will take a series of experiments with him that were created by Brazilian scientists and school children. This week a commission from the Russian space agency is in Brazil to examine the experiments.

On Monday the commission was at the National Institute of Space Research (Inpe) where the experiments were examined for security. "There can be no problems with vibrations, temperature or type of material that could compromise the structure of the space station," explains Otavio Bogossian, of Inpe.

The Marcos Pontos flight has been baptized the Centenary Mission, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the first ever public flight of a heavier-than-air powered aircraft in October 1906 in Paris by the Brazilian aviation pioneer, Alberto Santo Dumont.

Translation: Allen Bennett