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Imagine waking up on a tropical island.
You’re surrounded by palm trees, you hear singing birds and waves crashing into the coastal rocks. The island is small and with no permanent inhabitants; it is just you, some fellow tourists, a few hospitality staff, and the monkeys with their loud morning cries. If you find yourself on the Salvation Islands, off the coast of the city of Kourou, French Guiana, then you are a stone’s throw away from an active spaceport. And a rocket launch might be imminent.
I began to explore these islands a few weeks after first arriving in South America a few months ago. I made my way to Kourou to gather research on the social and cultural impacts of the space industry on local communities. My work is part of the ARIES project, a team of ethnographers who are investigating the impact of outer space on people around the globe and searching for missing narratives among communities woven into the global space industry.
For my research, I am particularly interested in how this European spaceport found its way to South American soil, and what it means for the surrounding communities. Fellow ARIES project member Peter Timko also published some of his research on Supercluster, taking a look at the culture around Norton Space Props in Hollywood and its impact on the space industry.
In my first weeks here, I’ve spent most of my time learning French, wandering around, and working in the archives of the Guiana Space Center. If you followed the anxiety-driven but successful Christmas morning launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021, then you are somewhat familiar with the mysterious spaceport in French Guiana. The massive space observatory was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on the Ariane 5 rocket.
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The European spaceport near Kourou, French Guiana, is an important launch site for rockets. Adèle Roncey
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