Brazil touts partnership with SpaceX to connect rural areas and monitor Amazon forest

Camilo Rocha and CNN’s Jaide Garcia

Brazil is looking to partner with SpaceX to expand internet connection to rural schools and protect the Amazon, the country’s Communications Minister Fabio Faria tweeted on Tuesday.

Faria’s tweets include a video and photo of himself with SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, whom he met in Texas.

“We’re looking forward to providing connectivity to the least served people in Brazil…especially to schools and hospitals in rural areas,” Musk says in the video, shaking hands with Faria.

“With better connectivity we can help ensure the preservation of the Amazon and monitor the Amazon to make sure there’s no illegal logging activity and deforestation,” Musk also says.

It is unclear what the terms of such a partnership might look like.

SpaceX’s Starlink project offers broadband internet through a satellite network. According to its website, the service is “ideally suited for areas where connectivity has been unreliable or completely unavailable.”

“We want to join the technology they have developed with the Communications Ministry’s own Wi-Fi Brazil program,” Faria said in a statement from his ministry.

“Our aim is to take the internet to rural areas and remote places, as well as helping to control fires and illegal deforestation in the Amazon forest.”

Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) already tracks deforestation in the Amazon via satellite imaging. However, Claudio Almeida, Amazon monitoring coordinator at INPE, told CNN he had not received any consultation regarding potential monitoring collaboration with SpaceX.

SpaceX did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

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Reporting by Camilo Rocha in Sao Paulo and CNN’s Jaide Garcia in Los Angeles.