INPE - 1978

• Begins drafting the proposal for Complete Brazilian Space Mission (MECB). The proposal for MECB would lay the groundwork for Space Technology development at INPE.
• The First Brazilian Symposium on Remote Sensing (SBSR) is held and it becomes the biggest national event in the area.
  
  
  
  1st Brazilian Symposium on Remote Sensing (SBSR).
• INPE presents the first study about deforestation in the Amazon Region using satellite images.
• Starts the Ozone Project (Experimental Inter-American Meteorological Rocket) involving NASA, Barreira do Inferno Launch Field (CLBI), and INPE. The rockets launches were performed at CLBI, in order to do ozone measurements, with 81 launches between 1978 and 1990.
• Starts the experiments by rockets, called South Atlantic Anomaly Probe, whose purpose was to measure radiation levels of the Van Allen radiation belt to protect Apollo orbital flights, which preceded the moon flights. The rockets were the Canadian "Black Brant IV", involving INPE (CNAE at that time), CLBI and NASA, to be launched from CLBI in 1968-1970.

  Worldwide

• Louise Brown born in Australia, world's first test-tube baby.

• The researchers Werner Arber, Daniel Nathans and Hamilton Smith won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine through research that would form the initial basis of recombinant DNA technology and, consequently, genetic engineering.