CONTENTS
- Meeting Links for Aerospace Latin America Seminars this Thursday and June 5
-
Next Talk in the Quarterly NASA History Presentation Seriesâ Aaron Bateman on âWeapons in Spaceâ
Meeting Links for Aerospace Latin America Seminars this Thursday and June 5
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.
Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 221 958 278 466
Passcode: Tx3jb3C3
Dial in by phone
+1 256-715-9946,,493540220# United
States, Huntsville
Phone conference ID: 493 540 220#
ALERT: All meeting participants consent to, and will abide by, the terms and conditions viewable at the LEGAL link below. No ITAR/EAR content display or sharing without consent from Export Control.
âUnpacking Latin America as an âEmergingâ Space Regionâ
Laura Delgado Lopez
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 former 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.
Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 219 605 678 340
Passcode: Vb3Nv39c
Dial in by phone
+1 256-715-9946,,58827963# United
States, Huntsville
Phone conference ID: 588 279 63#
ALERT: All meeting participants consent to, and will abide by, the terms and conditions viewable at the LEGAL link below. No ITAR/EAR content display or sharing without consent from Export Control.
Next Talk in the Quarterly NASA History Presentation Series â Aaron Bateman on âWeapons in Spaceâ
Join us on Wednesday, June 11 for the next installment in our quarterly NASA History lecture series. Our guest, Aaron Bateman, has a fascinating presentation prepared for us about the Strategic Defense
Initiative (SDI).
Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative
Aaron Bateman (George Washington University
Wednesday, June 11 at 12:00 pm EDT / 11:00 am CDT / 9:00 am PDT
In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan shocked the world when he established the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively known as âStar Wars,â a space-based missile defense program that aimed
to protect the United States from nuclear attack. In his presentation âWeapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative,â Aaron Bateman draws from recently declassified American, European, and Soviet documents
to give an insightful account of SDI, situating it within a new phase in the militarization of space after the superpower détente fell apart in the 1970s. Bateman reveals the largely secret role of military space technologies in lateâCold War US defense strategy
and foreign relations.
Aaron Bateman is
an assistant professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University. He received his PhD in history of science from Johns Hopkins University and previously served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer.
Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 283 102 858 171 0
Passcode: Jq9m7Cz6
Dial in by phone
+1 256-715-9946,,622051866# United
States, Huntsville
Phone conference ID: 622 051 866#
ALERT: All meeting participants consent to, and will abide by, the terms and conditions viewable at the LEGAL link below. No ITAR/EAR content display or sharing without consent from Export Control.
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