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 Presentation
“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.
Seminars in the Series
The following presentations in this series were held virtually on Microsoft Teams from February through September 2025.
- “Governing the Moon: A History” by Stephen Buono (University of Chicago)
- “A God’s Eye View: Aviators and the Re-Conquest of Latin America” by Pete Soland (University of Houston-Downtown)
- “The ALMA Telescope: How International Partnerships Transformed Astronomy in Latin America” by Rebecca Charbonneau (American Institute of Physics)
- “Tracking NASA in Mexico: How Empalme-Guaymas Bridged Space Technology, Power, and Diplomacy” by Gloria Maritza Gomez Revuelta (Universidad de Guadalajara)
- “NASA in Chile: Technology and Branding of the Main NASA Station in Latin America during the Cold War” by Hugo Palmarola (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
- “‘Orchestrating’ Spectrum: Cuba, Communications Satellites, and U.S. Empire, 1963” by Haris Durrani (Princeton University)
- “Unpacking Latin America as an ‘Emerging’ Space Region” by Laura Delgado Lopez
- “NASA in the Most Remote Area: The Laser Station and the Landing Strip on Easter Island during the 1980s” by Pedro Alonso (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
- “On-the-Ground Labor with Outer-Space Technologies: Workers at Mexico’s Tulancingo Satellite Earth Station” by Vanessa Freije (University of Washington)
- “Looking Up and Looking North: Outer Space Imaginaries in Mexico” by Anne W. Johnson (Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City)
- “Under an Entanglement of Skies: A Cultural Astronomy Approach to Our Relationship with the Cosmos” Alejandro Martin Lopez (Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas, University of Buenos Aires)
- “Lidar and Landscape Legacies in the Maya Lowlands: Insights from Belize” by Brett A. Houk (Texas Tech University, Lubbock) and Amy E. Thompson (The University of Texas at Austin)
- “Cold War and Satellite Diplomacy: The First Panamerican Symposium on Remote Sensing (Panama City, 1973)” by Sebastián Díaz Angel (Postdoctoral Researcher, CLIMASAT project, Institut d’Història de la Ciència, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain)
- “An Ethnographic History of Brazil’s Spaceport” by Sean T. Mitchell (Rutgers University)
- “Satellites, Sterilized Flies, and the Screwworm Scourge: NASA, la Comisión Nacional del Espacio Exterior, and the Mexican-American Screwworm Eradication Campaign, 1972–1980 by Brad Massey (NASA History)