CONTENTS

 

 

This Thursday: Pedro Alonso Presents Our Next Aerospace Latin America Seminar

 

 

“NASA in the Most Remote Area: The Laser Station and the Landing Strip on Easter Island during the 1980s”

Pedro Alonso (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
Thursday, July 10 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT

In 1985 a group of architecture students from the University of Chile made up two scale papier-mâché models of a Moai—the emblematic and monolithic human figures carved on volcanic stone by the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island—to create a barricade in demonstration against General Augusto Pinochet’s intentions to allow the installation of a U.S. NASA base on the island. A mixture of art, activism and politics, their performance defied the dictatorial regime by ultimately burning the figures. In fact, during that period, several episodes of technological exchange between Chile and the United States took place when tracking stations and other facilities were installed all along the country. By discussing a wide array of objects and visual materials, this talk will explore how science and technology were imagined, designed, and built alongside the politics, as well as the associated artistic and visual cultures attached to the reception and adaptation of those technological artifacts intended for one of the most remote areas of the planet. 

Pedro Ignacio Alonso holds a PhD in architecture from the Architectural Association in the United Kingdom and heads the PhD program in Architecture and Urban Studies at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He was a Princeton-Mellon Fellow at Princeton University (2015–2016) and a resident architect at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (2019). With Hugo Palmarola, he received the Silver Lion for the Chilean Pavilion Monolith Controversies at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014), which is now a permanent exhibit at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile.

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Join Us on July 24: Julie Klinger Presents “China–Latin America Space Cooperation: A Brief History”

 

 

“China-Latin America Space Cooperation: A Brief History”

Julie Klinger (Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and University of Delaware)
Thursday, July 24 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT

Neither the evolution of global space politics, nor the evolving nature of China-Latin America relations can be understood without considering the roles played by Latin America's and China's space programs in national, bilateral, and multilateral engagements. This talk provides a brief historical overview of bilateral outer space cooperation between China and Latin American countries. Multilateral engagements by all parties shaped the dawn of the space age in the 1960s, while bilateral engagements date back to 1984.

Julie Michelle Klinger is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware. Dr. Klinger and her research team conduct in-depth field-based and global-scope research on competing uses for energy-transition metals, materials, and infrastructures. She has published numerous articles on rare earth elements, natural resource use, environmental politics, and outer space, including the award-winning 2018 book Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Aerospace Latin America: A History Seminar Series

These presentations are part of a series exploring the origins, evolution, and historical context of aerospace in Mexico, Central America, and South America since the dawn of the space age. Presentations in the Aerospace Latin America Seminar Series are delivered by experts in their fields will canvas a broad range of topics including aerospace infrastructure development, space policy and law, Earth science applications, and much more. This seminar series is part of a collaborative effort to gather insights and share research that will conclude in an anthology of essays to be published as a NASA History Special Publication. The seminars will take place throughout 2025 with individual presentations held virtually bi-weekly or monthly.

Bookmark the Aerospace Latin America: A History webpage for updates on upcoming speakers.

 

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