I have had an ongoing level of interest in this for many years. Going back to 1991, we had the first space conference of the Americas which was held in Costa Rica. It was at that forum that the idea for a Latin American Space Agency began to be kicked around on a more formal basis. We had been working with a small group of Latin American scientists before then, but we managed to organize a fairly large conference that was sponsored by the government of Costa Rica, which was headed by Oscar Arias. He actually got on the phone and called all of his counterparts in the countries of Latin America.

We also had the help of the U.N. Development Program, which gave us a little bit of money, to put together this initial meeting. It was a real success, attended by official delegations from all of the countries of Latin America, and also the United States and Canada.

The general idea was not to have just a Latin American Space Agency but a Pan-American Space Agency, that would include the countries of North America—the U.S. and Canada. It was going to be patterned along the same lines as the European Space Agency, which would not prevent the existence of individual space agencies in each country. But it would bring together a lot of the “gray matter” that exists all over the region to embark on space projects that would be relevant to the respective countries.

This conference was the beginning of a series of conferences that took place every year, in a different host country. In that conference the topic of a space agency came up, and the Brazilians opposed it. They didn’t want such an agency to be created. So they threw cold water on the idea, but it certainly raised the level of consciousness of other countries of doing it. The conference in Costa Rica put the idea on the table. It was not formally endorsed by all of the countries, but the idea remains, and stays quite alive.

The result of the Costa Rica conference was to create, not a space agency, but a protemporary secretariat at the official national level, and all of the countries agreed to participate. The delegates selected a secretary general, who was the Minister of Science and Technology of Costa Rica. The idea was that whenever the conference would take place in another country, the secretariat would transfer over to the host country.

After that first meeting, the strategy was not to focus too much in creating a space agency, per se, but more on projects that would be catalytic: that would bring together groups of countries in the region, which, by doing projects, would be building the bricks that would eventually create the infrastructure. Then, the decision to take the step toward a space agency would be a lot more palatable, if you had already a framework that had been tested and proven to work.

Question: What was accomplished at the second meeting?

The second conference took place two years later in Santiago de Chile, and the Foreign Ministry selected a protemporary secretary, who was one of the ambassadors. In Chile, we started a bunch of new projects, which had NASA sponsorship, but also were sponsored by the individual governments.

One of them has been very successful—the Chagas project. In this project, the idea was to use space technology, particularly protein crystallization, to study the structure of the parasite that causes Chagas disease, which is a very serious problem in Latin America. It affects between 16 and 18 million people in Central and South America, and about 20,000 die each year. Protein crystallization technology is also being developed for studying diseases like AIDS and cancer.

Chagas is known as a “poor man’s disease,” so the problem was not being addressed by the big drug companies. We felt this was an ideal project to involve quite a few of the countries, and show how space technology can be relevant to the development of the region.

The project brought together Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina, and Uruguay. We obtained permission from NASA to fly protein enzymes from the trypanasoa parasite that causes Chagas disease, on the Space Shuttle, to study their structure. On a later flight, the Brazilians joined the project. The protein made by the parasite that was chosen as the target to study in space, was one that is critical in the metabolic cyle of the parasite. If you could inhibit this protein, you could kill the parasite, because it cannot metabilize.

In the Brazilian experiment, which flew on a Shuttle mission, this protein was mixed with a compound which was extracted from a plant in the tropical rain forest, which seems to have anti-parasitic, medicinal properties. This chemical compound, produced by the plant, could be synthesized, if we understood its structure, and its interaction with the parasite. Then it could be used as a treatment. The results in space were quite compelling, particularly when they crystallized the protein together with the inhibitor.

Question: Will there be a follow-on to the Shuttle experiments?

Because these Shuttle flights are so short, the protein crystallization does not produce large crystals. You need long periods of time in weightlessness, which means you need to take this to the International Space Station. The U.S. government has authorized some funding in collaboration with funding from the other countries, to bring the project to a new level of expertise, more sophisticated techniques, and look at the possibilities of flying a permanent experiment that would be located on the space station.

This project is being managed out of EARTH University (Escuela de Agricultura de la Region Tropical Humida) in Costa Rica, which deals with new uses for biodiversity. It is an amazing place. The people in this University, which is smack in the center of the rain forest, are looking at how to use the resources of the rain forest, and one of them is the extraction of medicinal compounds, which could be synthesized if we understood their structure. This is one project that really took off from this initiative to generate a space agency.

Question: How many scientists are involved in the project?

To date, we have 18 scientists involved in six countries, with at least two or three institutions per country involved. Dr. Larry DeLucas, from the Center for Macromolecular Crystallography in Alabama, provided the space in his experiment, and is part of the group. He is very excited about it. He had never heard of Chagas disease before.

The other thing that happened at the conference in Costa Rica, is that Costa Rica became connected to what was the early Internet, called Bitnet. In those days, none of the countries were connected, and at the conference, we initiated the very first network connection between Costa Rica and the United States. We connected with the NASA network, directly from the hotel, and demonstrated how you could have remote access of data.

The idea was to put all of the Latin American scientists to work. In Latin America, we have scientists, but not enough data. Here in the United States you have the opposite; we have tons of data sitting in the data banks, waiting to be looked at. Now, of course, the rest of Latin America is connected to the Internet.

I think this idea is gathering momentum. I’ve been visiting all the countries, talking to all of the people about this idea of a joint space agency. The Brazilians have been quite reticient to be a part of it because they felt they wanted to go it alone. They have already done so, but there is a lot of potential out there.

Question: Was there a conference that followed the one in Chile?

Yes, there was one in Uruguay, in Punto del Este, and this was another step in the process.

But I came to the conclusion that the best way to approach this problem was not by going from conference to conference, because I noticed there was a lot of talk, but very little in the way of action. I think the best way is to actually do some projects and demonstrate what can be done. That has been my strategy from that time—stay away from a lot of hot air that comes out of politicians who go to talk about these things in conferences, because it doesn’t amount to much. I prefer to focus on projects that are more tangible and produce some results that people can see.

Question: There is already a lot of international cooperation on space projects in Latin America, between Argentina and Brazil on a satellite, between Brazil and NASA on the International Space Station, and with China. If you look at Latin America as a whole, there is the capability to do many things in space, from designing, building and testing satellites, to launching them, and then analyzing the data. But so far the expertise and infrastructure are spread around in many places, and not coordinated.

That is exactly right, and precisely the problem. You know, they say that we are a continent separated by a common language! It is crazy. Latin Americans have everything going for them, yet the interaction doesn’t exist, I guess because of the historical roots of how the countries developed.