CONTENTS
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This Thursday: Sebastián DÃaz Angel Presents âCold War and Satellite Diplomacyâ
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Donât Miss the Final Two Seminars in the âAerospace Latin America: A Historyâ Series
This Thursday: Sebastián DÃaz Angel Presents âCold War and Satellite Diplomacyâ
âCold War and Satellite Diplomacy: The First Panamerican Symposium on Remote Sensing (Panama City, 1973)â
Sebastián DÃaz Angel (Postdoctoral Researcher, CLIMASAT project, Institut d'Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)
Thursday, September 11 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
This talk examines the "First Panamerican Symposium on Remote Sensing," held in Panama City in 1973, as a critical moment for satellite data infrastructure formation in the
Americas. Organized by the U.S. EROS Program, the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, the Inter-American Geodetic Survey, and Panama's Instituto Geográfico Nacional Tommy Guardia, this symposium represents a key event for understanding how satellite
technologies became embedded in hemispheric power relations during the Cold War. Drawing from symposium proceedings and archival materials, Sebastián DÃaz Angel analyzes how remote sensing technologies were framed as necessary tools for national development
and environmental management. The symposium both reinforced existing power asymmetries and created opportunities for Latin American countries to assert influence over emerging satellite data infrastructures. This historical case study illuminates how early
remote sensing collaborations established enduring patterns in data governance, science diplomacy, and surveillance infrastructure that continue to shape contemporary debates on technological sovereignty, national security, environmental management, and resource
development in the Global South.
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Donât Miss the Final Two Seminars in the âAerospace Latin America: A Historyâ Series
SEPTEMBER 18
âAn Ethnographic History of Brazil's Spaceportâ
Sean T. Mitchell (Rutgers University, Newark)
Thursday, September 18 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
In 1982, in the waning years of Brazil's military dictatorship, a Brazilian Air Force team arrived in northern Brazil, carrying plans to build Brazilâs satellite launch base.
The equatorial region, Alcântara, Maranhão, is ideal for satellite launch; it was also once the hub of a wealth-generating cotton economy based on enslaved labor. However, as that export economy faltered, free black communities formed in the area, long before
slavery's abolition in 1888. Many of those communities suffered forced relocation when the base was constructed. Drawing on and updating the ethnographic research that led to the publication of the book, Constellations of Inequality: Space, Race, and Utopia
in Brazil (University of Chicago Press, 2017), this talk examines the history and politics of this equatorial spaceport in its local, national, and international context.
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SEPTEMBER 25
âSatellites, Sterilized Flies, and the Screwworm Scourge: NASA, la Comisión Nacional del Espacio Exterior, and the Mexican-American Screwworm Eradication Campaign,
1972â1980â
Brad Massey (NASA History Office)
Thursday, September 25 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
In 1972, a screwworm outbreak plagued the U.S. and Mexican cattle industries. The parasite ultimately cost ranchers millions of dollars and contributed to food inflation.
In response, U.S. and Mexican agricultural officials created the Comisión México Americana para la Erradicación del Gusano Barrenador del Ganado [COMEXA]. Also known as the Mexican-American Screwworm Eradication Commission.
This history examines the role NASA and Mexicoâs Comisión Nacional del Espacio Exterior [CONEE] played in the multi-agency campaign to eradicate screwworms. The presentation begins
with a brief look at the joint NASA-CONEE agricultural initiatives of the 1960s. It then examines the 1972 screwworm outbreak and the NASA-CONEE-COMEXA collaboration that led to the creation of the Screwworm Eradication Data System [SEDS]. Using satellite, aircraft,
and ground-sourced climate and moisture data from Mexico and the United States, SEDS designers created an algorithm that predicted where screwworms might proliferate. SEDS proponents argued that COMEXA could use these predictions to determine where to drop sterilized
flies in its quest to stop the spread of screwworms.
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