Some children and teenagers (as well as some adults) are passionate regarding stars, planets and everything involving outer space. The media today have live broadcasts of phenomena such as the recent partial solar eclipse on April 8 or the launch of rockets that bring the community closer to these experiences.
But, what careers should be studied in Guatemala to work one day in the country? National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASAby its acronym in English, in other international agencies or create a Guatemalan company that works internationally on space issues. Does that mean dreaming too much?
Guatemalans and Central Americans are currently positioned in important positions in this area and there are various initiatives that aim to awaken this fever for growth in the space industry.
For example, Frank Rubio, from Salvadoran parents and who is a NASA astronaut; there is also the Guatemalan project of the CubeSat Quetzal-1 that was put into orbit; as well as Nicaragua that in 2021 I created the National Secretariat for Outer Space Affairs, the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, or Costa Rica which created the first Central American satellite created in that country, to give some examples that have emerged in the region, in addition to the fact that there is Central American talent in various global projects.
One of the latest initiatives that has brought Central Americans together is the Central American Space Congress (CEC), which will be held at the University of Costa Rica in 2023.
The main objective of this event was to bring together industry, academia and governments from the Central American region, as well as local and international counterparts. Participating in the congress were representatives from the Department of State of the United States of America, the governments of Costa Rica and Guatemala, three NASA centers, the Mexican Space Agency (AEM) and the Latin American and Caribbean Space Agency (ALCE), as well as academics, scientists, students and entrepreneurs from 19 different countries in Latin America and Europe.
Andrés Mora, Astrobee Engineering Lead and organizer of CEC, shares that at a conference in 2022 he saw that some experts were from the region and brought them together to propose doing something for Central America and that was how this initiative was born.
“The first CEC was led by six Central Americans…we were expecting 50 people and regarding 400 arrived, almost half of them women,” adds Guatemalan Luis Zea, adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and founder of Jaguar Space, LLC.
Why prepare and study to learn regarding space issues?
“It is important that the talent in our region can be developed and that it is also seen as an option to develop science and technology in our countries and to develop our own technology using ancestral knowledge and other types of knowledge that can be used, not only science is done abroad,” adds Leonora de Lemos, coordinator of the Aerospace Engineering Group at the University of Costa Rica.
For her part, the Guatemalan Katherinne Herrera-Jordan, founder and director of Verne Technologies, also reflects that the space sector is a great support to the economy in different countries,Both in the import and export of space services, “thanks to activities such as the CEC, other countries are made aware that useful, high-quality technology is being generated in the region and that they look to our region to acquire our products and services,” he says.
“We are interested in increasingly integrating the Central American population into the space issue. Central America has a large indigenous population and we would like to see policies that integrate them into the future of the space issue,” says Javier Mejuto, dean of the Faculty of Space Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Honduras.
For Mora, pThe most important thing in this area is that young people seek engineering, chemistry, law, psychology, medicine, among other careers that take their knowledge to specialize in the Spanish world.cial.
“Anything we do on Earth will work in space. Students imagine that this only means going into space, but it requires multidisciplinary teams from recruiting personnel, to those who build the rockets and a number of other professions,” he adds.
“In Central America, we have records of astronomical observations dating back 3,500 years, and space is a human activity that requires all kinds of activities. And any discipline of knowledge is susceptible to being related to space,” Mejuto concludes.
Guatemala will host the space in September
The II Central American Space Congress (CEC) 2024, will be held at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, UVG, in Guatemala City, from September 10 to 12, 2024. This is a fundamental forum for people from Central America, both within the region and abroad, to share their current projects with the regional and global community.
The presentations will have a variety of topics such as biology and space medicine, rocketry, development of CubeSats (past, present and future), development of the space ecosystem (public policies), education and outreach, inclusion (gender and diversity) in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), innovation and space technological entrepreneurship, space robotics and use of remote sensing dataexplains José Bagur, head of the Aerospace Laboratory at UVG.
Find details to participate at cecspace.org. Specific queries can be sent to: faq@cecspace.org
Frank Rubio
American astronaut of Salvadoran origin Frank Rubio, one of the men who spent the most time in space, said in one of his last interviews that he wants to continue his missions at NASA and serve as an inspiration for the “youth of the planet.”
Rubio, 48, is the person who has spent the most days in space, having spent 371 days on the International Space Station (ISS) between September 2022 and September 2023. Initially, his mission was to last six months, but a failure in his ship forced him to stay another six months on the station.
Rubio said there are currently “regarding 50 astronauts” in the US space agency and he hopes to continue on missions “for another 10 or 15 years.” The next one might come in regarding four years, he estimated.
Rubio was born on December 11, 1975 in Los Angeles, California. He is the son of Salvadoran parents and spent some of his childhood in El Salvador. He is married and the father of four children. He was a helicopter pilot in the United States Army when he was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2017.
With information from AFP
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