We invite you to join us for the upcoming presentations in the NASA History Officeâs Aerospace Latin America: A History Symposium Series!
UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS
- This Thursday Hugo Palmarola Presents on âNASA in Chileâ
- May 15: Haris Durraniâs ââOrchestratingâ Spectrumâ Presentation
- June 5: Laura Delgado Lopez âUnpacking Latin America as an âEmergingâ Space Regionâ
This Thursday Hugo Palmarola Presents on âNASA in Chileâ
âNASA in Chile: Technology and Branding of the Main NASA Station in Latin America during the Cold Warâ
Hugo Palmarola (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
Thursday, May 1 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
Hugo Palmarola will present his interdisciplinary research exploring the role of NASA stations in Chile during the most critical period of the Space Race and the Cold War. His 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 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
ââOrchestratingâ Spectrum: Cuba, Communications Satellites, and U.S. Empire, 1963â
Haris Durrani (Princeton University)
Thursday, May 15 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
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 ITUâs 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.
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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June 5: Laura Delgado Lopez on âUnpacking Latin America as an âEmergingâ Space Regionâ
âUnpacking Latin America as an âEmergingâ Space Regionâ
Laura Delgado Lopez (NASA)
Thursday, June 5 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
Beyond the academic debate about how to categorize the different levels of space activity across the world, the term âemergingâ tends to lead to assumptions about space as a very limited
or recent development in a region like Latin America. As this presentation will highlight, there is incredible diversity and breadth of activity in Latin America â in key areas that include not just technology and programs, but also governance, institutional
frameworks, and international cooperation and coordination. This presentation will discuss these developments and the context shaping Latin American space activities to date.
Laura Delgado Lopez is the Policy Advisor in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.
She has worked in space policy in government, industry and the non-profit sector in the Washington, DC area for the last 15 years. In 2023-2024, while on leave of absence from NASA, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
where she researched and wrote about space-related issues in Latin America. Among her publications is a CSIS policy brief, Orbital Dynamics: The Domestic and Foreign Policy Forces Shaping Latin American Engagement in Space.
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