Marcos Pontes

Pontes' flight coincided with celebrations of the 100th anniversary of Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont's successful flight of a fixed-wing airplane in Paris in October 1906.

Marcos Cesar Pontes (born 11 March 1963) is a Brazilian Air Force pilot, engineer, AEB astronaut, politician and author.

In June 1998, he was selected by the Brazilian Space Agency to train in the NASA space program after he acquired a space-related background in the Aeronautical Engineering division of the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (the Aeronautics Institute of Technology, or "ITA").

He began NASA training in August 1998 and qualified as Space Shuttle Mission Specialist in December 2000.

He attended the Naval Postgraduate School of the US Navy in 1998.

Initially, Pontes' maiden space flight was scheduled to be on a Space Shuttle, where he was to help transport the ExPRESS Pallet, which would have been the International Space Station's first Brazilian-made component, into orbit.

Negotiations between NASA and AEB (the Brazilian Space Agency) fell through due to budgetary concerns.

During the delay, Pontes ran a campaign to pressure the Brazilian government to complete the Express Pallet, and he worked on technical assignments in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch at NASA.

His flight was postponed indefinitely when AEB confirmed that it could not produce the Express Pallet and its components for NASA.

Pontes is one of the most experienced jet pilots in the Brazilian Air Force (FAB), where he holds the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and has flown more than 2000 hours in 25 different aircraft.

On September 2, 2005, an agreement between the governments of Brazil and Russia was reached which provided for Pontes to train at Star City, near Moscow, to learn about the Soyuz's operational and life-support systems, and to fly to the International Space Station in March 2006.

The agreement, which cost about US$20 million was signed by the presidents of the Brazilian and Russian space agencies, Sérgio Gaudenzi and Anatoli Perminov, respectively.

He became the first South American and the first Lusophone to go into space when he docked onto the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TMA-8 on March 30, 2006.

He is the only Brazilian to have completed the NASA astronaut training program, although he switched to training in Russia after NASA's Space Shuttle program encountered problems.

On March 30, 2006, Pontes became the first Brazilian and the first native Portuguese-speaking person to go into space, where he stayed on the International Space Station for a week.

During his trip, Pontes carried out eight experiments selected by the Brazilian Space Agency.

He landed in Kazakhstan on April 8, 2006, with the crew of Expedition 12.

Following the Soyuz mission, Pontes returned to his technical duties for the International Space Station Program at the Johnson Space Center, working with FIESP/SENAI-SP on the development and fabrication of the Brazilian parts for the ISS.

Pontes entered the reserve of the Brazilian Air Force and awaits a new space mission.

He is also an Invited Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo at São Carlos.

He is an ambassador of UNIDO and WorldSkills.

Pontes opened an educational foundation and a tourism agency together with the future Brazilian space tourist Marcos Palhares, who will be traveling to space through the Virgin Galactic.

Pontes announced his intention to visit space a second time back in 2009.

In his 2011 book Missão Cumprida, he also declared that he is interested in a possible candidacy for an unspecified political post in Brazil and he tried to be elected as "Deputado Federal" during the 2014 São Paulo gubernatorial election.

After Jair Bolsonaro's election as President of Brazil in 2018, Pontes was officially nominated to be Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, a post which he accepted days later and assumed when Bolsonaro's government began.

He left the post on 31 March 2022 and in the same year was elected federal senator for his state, São Paulo.

Pontes was born in the town of Bauru, in the southeastern state of São Paulo.

His father Vergílio was a civil servant of the Instituto Brasileiro do Café and his mother Zuleika was clerk of the Rede Ferroviária Federal (RFFSA).

In the 2018 São Paulo gubernatorial election he was elected side with Major Olímpio as second alternate in the Senate.

In October 31, Jair Bolsonaro announced that he would be the next Minister of Science and Technology.

This choice left the scientific community with polarized opinions, ranging from how the public sees the profession of astronaut in connection with science and the fact that the minister is not an active scientist and researcher, in addition to concern about his lack of political articulation.

After the disclosure of data on deforestation in the Amazon by INPE, discredited by Bolsonaro, Marcos Pontes called the then President of Inpe Ricardo Galvão to address the way he has been acting in the media and also declared to share "...the strangeness expressed by our President Bolsonaro...".

no matter how much he doesn't believe the data to be false.

On August 7, 2019 the resignation of Ricardo Galvão was published after his resignation on August 2.

He was exonerated at the request of Bolsonaro.

Directors of research centres linked to the Ministry asked Pontes to intercede on behalf of Galvão, something that did not happen.

Military Darcton Policarpo Damião was chosen to take over Inpe on an interim basis.

In July 2020, he tested positive for COVID-19.

In a survey published by Veja magazine in October 2021, it was revealed that the minister had made 107 international trips, had stayed 1 in 3 days away for travel among his nearly 1000 days in office, had spent more than R$500,000 (US$ ), and was the minister in the Bolsonaro government who traveled abroad the most.

This travel expense becomes relevant after he criticized the government for cutting R$600 million (US$ ) from the Science and Technology Ministry.