The first South American country to launch its own rocket to space could be Brazil, come Monday.

With the geographical advantage of a close-to-equator launch complex near the Atlantic Ocean in eastern Brazil, Alcantara reckons to be the future site of a lot of space shots, possibly space travel.

Brazil has tried before -- in 1997 and 1999 -- to reach space, but those attempts had to be aborted moments after liftoff. This time, Major-Brigadier Tiago da Silva Ribeiro, the general coordinator of the project, says it won't be like before.

He was in charge of those two launches, too.

The 6-story tall rocket, built in Sao Paulo, will be topped with two satellites provided by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. They will enter orbit at about 470 miles altitude, a height they should reach about eight minutes after launch.

The purposes of those new Brazilian birds: communications and positioning

If all goes well, there should be increasing traffic to the Alcantera peninsula, where the economy is otherwise flat, and where the history was richest in the 18th century, when Portuguese slave traders and cotton merchants became locally wealthy.

Ukraine, for instance, has recently signed up to have its own Cyclone rockets launch from there.

One unusual feature of the launch: no media are invited. "We do not want to misdirect our attentions," Ribeiro explained.

UPDATE: Friday

We learned that "the rocket was destroyed" by an accident, according to the Brazilian Space Agency. Details of just what happened, and details on the condition of the satellites, were not available. There was no mention of human casualties; nor of property damage.

FMI: www.mct.gov.br