2025 Seminar Series
Throughout 2025, the NASA History Office is presenting a seminar series on the topic of Aerospace Latin America. This series will explore the origins, evolution, and historical context of aerospace in the region since the dawn of the Space Age, touching on 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 research that will conclude in an anthology of essays to be published as a NASA History Special Publication. Individual presentations are being held virtually bi-weekly or monthly.
Upcoming Presentations
“Looking Up and Looking North: Outer Space Imaginaries in Mexico”
Anne W. Johnson (Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City)
Thursday, August 14 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
Porfirio Díaz memorably lamented, “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.” The ambivalence often felt by many Mexicans toward its dominant northern neighbor has also made itself felt in the context of the space race. In this talk, Anne W. Johnson reflects on the historical role of NASA in diverse Mexican narratives about the human exploration of outer space, showing how the agency has traditionally functioned both aspirationally and critically as a symbolic condensation of power, technology, and the future.
“Under an Entanglement of Skies: A Cultural Astronomy Approach to Our Relationship with the Cosmos”
Alejandro Martin Lopez (University of Buenos Aires)
Thursday, August 21 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
Cultural Astronomy is an interdisciplinary field that unites specialists from a diverse array of disciplines, including astronomy, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, architecture, engineering, topography, linguistics, history, physics, mathematics, and more. In general terms, it can be described as a perspective, a methodological approach to understanding our relationships with the sky, considering them as an integral part of the social and cultural dynamics of the diverse human groups to which we belong.
In this seminar, Alejandro Martin Lopez will explore cultural astronomy based on twenty-six years of experience researching the astronomies of indigenous peoples in the Argentine Chaco and their interactions and conflicts with European-origin astronomies, the formal education system, Christian missions, heritage management, academics and academic research facilities, and the art world. From this foundation, he demonstrates how this interdisciplinary approach can offer fresh perspectives on the diversity of human relationships with the sky, enabling us not only to deepen our understanding of the past and present but also to envision a more inclusive and thriving cosmic future.
“Lidar and Landscape Legacies in the Maya Lowlands: Insights from Belize”
Brett A. Houk (Texas Tech University, Lubbock)
Amy E. Thompson (The University of Texas at Austin)
Thursday, September 4 at 2:00 pm EDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 11:00 am PDT
The central Maya lowlands is notable for its pre- and post-Columbian archaeological resources as well as its place in the history of aerospace and remote sensing in Latin America. As early as the 1970s, Maya archaeologists began working with NASA engineers to develop innovative remote sensing technologies to search for Maya sites from the air and from space. While these early efforts had mixed results, they paved the way for the adoption of airborne lidar to penetrate the dense forests of the Maya lowlands to map large swaths of land, which revolutionized our ability to use remotely sensed data to reveal both ancient anthropogenic and natural landscape features. In this paper, we discuss several lidar datasets from different regions of Belize. We discuss the impacts of modern vegetation and topographic variation that must be considered as we use lidar data to remotely observe pre-Columbian settlement in a case study from southern Belize. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of lidar to study 2,500 years of landscape history in northwestern Belize. We frame our analysis around landscape legacies—the physical remains of human-caused disturbances to the landscape—to examine Late Preclassic and Classic Maya settlement and the extensive disturbances caused by British logging in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The findings from both study regions highlight the trajectories of using remotely sensed data to elucidate landscape legacies.
“Cold War and Satellite Diplomacy: The First Panamerican Symposium on Remote Sensing (Panama City, 1973)”
Sebastián Díaz 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, I analyze how remote sensing technologies were framed as necessary tools for national development and environmental management. The paper interrogates the symposium as a sociotechnical and diplomatic forum where U.S. experts negotiated regional data regimes and shaped technological transfer between North and South American nations within Cold War geopolitics. Attention is paid to how 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.
“An Ethnographic History of Brazil's Spaceport”
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 Brazil’s 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. This talk examines the history and politics of this equatorial spaceport in its local, national, and international context.
“Satellites, Sterilized Flies, and the Screwworm Scourge: NASA, la Comisión Nacional del Espacio Exterior, and the Mexican-American Screwworm Eradication Campaign, 1972–1980”
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 Mexico’s 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.
How to Attend
These presentations will be held via Microsoft Teams. For details on how to attend the meetings, join the NASA History mailing list to receive updates. Just send a blank email to history-join@lists.hq.nasa.gov to join. Alternatively, send us an email to receive a link for the next meeting.