CONTENTS
- Join Us This Thursday for the Next Presentation in Our Seminar Series
- May 1: Hugo Palmarola Presents on âNASA in Chileâ
- May 15: Haris Durraniâs ââOrchestratingâ Spectrumâ Presentation
Join Us This Thursday for the Next Presentation in Our Seminar Series

Tracking NASA in Mexico: How Empalme-Guaymas Bridged Space Technology, Power, and Diplomacy
Gloria Maritza Gomez Revuelta
Universidad de Guadalajara
Thursday, April 17, 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT on Teams (link
below)
What can a single tracking station in northern Mexico reveal about NASA's role as an instrument of Cold-War science diplomacy? This talk explores space diplomacy through the Empalme-Guaymas tracking station, strategically positioned in NASA's Manned Space Flight
Network for Project Mercury. By critically analyzing the complex interactions between NASA, the Mexican government, scientific caudillos, and local populations, the research interrogates the nuanced regional, hemispheric, and global power dynamics embedded
in the small tracking station. It shows how different institutions, collectives and individuals negotiated, questioned, and shaped space diplomacy during the first years of space exploration. Drawing from newspaper archives, interviews, films, and other publications,
the study unpacks a rich microhistory of space diplomacyârevealing that it was far more than a technical exchange between national institutions, but a complex process characterized by social unrest, rumors, and fears, as well as love and celebration.
Gloria Maritza Gómez Revuelta (PhD in History, El Colegio de México) researches the histories of outer space and geophysics in Mexico and the broader Third World during the Cold War. She is a lecturer at Universidad de Guadalajara, where she hosts the
science and technology podcast Cosas de Sapiens. Her work has received support by, among other institutions, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Freie Universität Berlin, and the Science History Institute. She is a member of the Science,
Technology and Diplomacy Committee of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.
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May 1: Hugo Palmarola Presents on âNASA in Chileâ
NASA in Chile: Technology and Branding of the Main NASA Station in Latin America during the Cold War
Hugo Palmarola
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Thursday, May 1, 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT on Teams (link
below)
Hugo Palmarolaâs interdisciplinary research explores the role of NASA stations in Chile during the most critical period of the space race and the Cold War. The analysis delves into the technological and geopolitical factors that elevated NASAâs presence in
Chile to the status of the primary NASA station in Latin America. This station played a pivotal role in completing the deployment of âthe fence,â a term referring to the line crossing the American continent from north to south, passing through the United States,
Cuba, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. Its purpose was to capture the orbit of the first satellites launched by the United States in the western meridian. Additionally, this research scrutinizes the impact of graphic design and NASAâs visual culture in shaping
a brand image and scientific imagery. These visual elements played a crucial role in garnering acceptance from various Latin American governments and universities for U.S. strategic operations.
Hugo Palmarola is an associate professor in the School of Design at Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile. He holds a PhD in Latin American studies from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and won the student essay prize from the Design History Society in the United Kingdom for his doctoral research (2018). With Pedro Alonso, he received
the Silver Lion for the Chilean Pavilion Monolith Controversies at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014). Palmarola has been a scholar and fellow at the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) (2008).
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May 15: Haris Durraniâs ââOrchestratingâ Spectrumâ Presentation
âOrchestratingâ Spectrum: Cuba, Communications Satellites, and U.S. Empire, 1963
Haris Durrani
Princeton University
Thursday, May 15, 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT on Teams (link
below)
In 1963, the UN held a conference to regulate a groundbreaking development of the Space Age: the communications satellite. The conference was convened at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency that allocated radiofrequencies.
The âSpace Conferenceâ would determine frequencies for communications satellites. A team of U.S. lawyers, corporate executives, agency officials, and diplomats proposed a âfirst come, first servedâ regime allowing âfreedom of accessâ to spectrum. They soon
confronted a team of engineers, lawyers, politicians, and agency officials from post-revolutionary Cuba, led by the Vice Minister of Communications, Pedro Waldo Luis y Torres, who resisted U.S. proposals. They were followed by a coalition of delegations from
nations in the âsocialistâ and âdevelopingâ worlds. These delegations made the first âreservationsâ to the ITU's historically stable regulations. U.S. efforts were, Torres claimed, a continuation of the U.S. and European empires from which these âsmall countriesâ
were freeing themselves.
Historians have found notions of globalism intrinsic to anti-imperial efforts in international law (e.g. the Bandung or Tricontinental Conferences), or else antithetical
to ideas of sovereignty. The conference presents a concept of global scaleâthe apparently U.S. idea of free, universal access to spectrum or outer spaceâand concerns about self-determination, through the claim that spectrum allocation affected Cuban sovereignty.
But its story complicates the view that globalism and sovereignty were foils during decolonization. Sovereignty and the global imaginary of âfreeâ access to spectrum were not antithetical but part of a shared legal vocabulary wherein imperialism and anti-imperialism
were contested.
Durraniâs talk argues Cubansâ opposition was part of a larger effort to name and reject U.S. empire. In this effort, U.S. reliance on legal certainty rendered communications
regulation a point of vulnerability. Law became a field of contestation for resisting empireâan unexpected weakness which Torres and his colleague seized upon.
Haris A. Durrani is a lawyer and historian of law, technology, and extraterritoriality.
He holds a PhD from the Department of History at Princeton University, where he was in the Program in History of Science. He previously obtained a JD from Columbia Law School, an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge,
and a BS in Applied Physics from Columbia Engineering. Currently, he is a law clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He is a former NASA Fellow in the History of Space Technology, and, starting this fall, he will be a Prize Fellow in Economics,
History, and Politics at Harvard University. His most recent work appears in Cosmic Fragments: Dislocation and Discontent in the Global Space Age (University of Pittsburgh Press), edited by Asif Siddiqi.
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