INFRASTRUCTURES

In 2018, the president of Ecuador announced the closure of the Ecuadorian Space Institute. The Institute operated out of a space station in Cotopaxi, Ecuador that was constructed by NASA in 1956 as part of the first U.S. satellite tracking network – the Minitrack Network. Since its installation during the early years of the Cold War, the Cotopaxi space station has filtered through various names, institutional affiliations, and functions. After NASA withdrew their operations in 1981, the space station was absorbed into Ecuador’s Center for Integrated Survey of Natural Resources by Remote Sensing (CLIRSEN). Under CLIRSEN, the space station became a government institution dedicated to the production of satellite data utilized by the Ecuadorian security forces.

The Cotopaxi space station is a contested infrastructure – a site of great politicization, investment, and divestment, depending on the political whims of Ecuador and the U.S. The physical infrastructure of the space station was repurposed as activities shifted from space communication to meteorology and geographic sciences. Meanwhile, the space station as a knowledge production apparatus was reimagined as activities shifted from space exploration to a technocratic project of satellite data production to support state projects, including anti-narcotic intelligence operations.

This project traces the fungible and contested nature of the space station. How has technology moved between NASA and Ecuadorian military forces? What colonial imaginaries are at play in state narratives that portray Ecuador as undeserving of space exploration? How do academic, military, and governmental infrastructures interact to both expand and limit our hermeneutic horizons?