Honduras no longer only dreams of space.
The Central American country is about to take its first steps in the space race with the launch of the Morazán satellite, a 10x10x10 centimeter cube that will serve to protect the lives of millions of people in Central America from frequent flooding in places with less access.
The launch is scheduled, if everything goes as planned, for the first half of 2023. At the moment, it is in preparation.
“When we hear of satellites it is natural to think of the United States, Russia and Japan.
No one imagines Honduras,” admits Diana Rosales, one of the five students at the National Autonomous University (UNAH) in charge of carrying out this nanosatellite, which is the third in the Central American region.
"But we don't have to go that far to see something shocking, here we are already challenging technology to the maximum and we are doing it for the good of our societies," she highlights.
Professors and students from the University of Costa Rica and the University of San Carlos de Guatemala also collaborate in the project.
Central America is one of the areas most affected by the climate crisis, being quite prone to floods, tropical storms, hurricanes, among other extreme events.
For this reason, the scientific mission of the Morazán satellite is to monitor three high-risk basins: Samalá in Guatemala, Matina in Costa Rica and Ulúa in Honduras, the latter devastated by the passage of cyclones Iota and Eta in November 2020. The artifact in question will generate an early warning system to evacuate the surrounding populations in time and, in addition, will serve for them to send emergency messages and be helped.
"This is a historic step for our country and it is very significant, especially after the social, economic and political difficulties we have been through in recent years," says the 25-year-old student.
Since the coup d'etat in 2009, in Honduras it has rained on wet.
Immersed in corruption, violence and with 73.6% of households living in poverty, the country has been described as a "national tragedy" by its first female president, Xiomara Castro.
Here we are already challenging technology to the maximum and we are doing it for the good of our societies
Diana Rosales, UNAH student in charge of carrying out the Morazán satellite
With everything against it, the Morazán project has been advancing, since 2019, in the manufacture of the satellite that it plans to launch next year with the support of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). ) under the KiboCUBE program.
“This space race was a distant dream.
To make it a reality, we had to realize that the capacity and talent are in our country,” says Rosales, who studied Industrial Mechanical Engineering with the hope of one day reaching space.
Ana Thompson, 23, also dreamed of being an astronaut as a child.
"But when I grew up, I lost hope," says the Electrical Engineering graduate in charge of designing an electronic board to adapt the satellite camera.
In addition to the objective of saving lives, Morazán has the educational mission of allowing schoolchildren to access satellite images on their mobiles.
“Several components of the artifact are already prefabricated, but there are two parts, the plate and the clean room, which will be made by Honduran hands.
That is a pride for me because I feel that this girl who lost hope today returns to dream of touching the stars, "she acknowledges.
More women in science
The Morazán project in Honduras is made up of 40 people, of which 60% are students.
His selection took place during the 2020 quarantine through the Spacethon, an intensive course with a series of individual and collective challenges.
Out of 500 participants, only 14 students made the final team.
"We believe in meritocracy within this process, they earned the position because they are brilliant minds for the project and are very necessary within it," says Fernando Zorto, director of the initiative and professor of Mechanical Engineering at UNAH.
María José Anderson, 23, remembers the day of the results.
"Not only was I crying, I could hear my classmates crying because it is something historic and the truth is that, as a Honduran woman, I feel honored to be making history," says the Civil Engineering student, who works on the structure of the room. clean area where the satellite parts will be assembled.
“This is going to have a positive impact on other women, because when I see a woman in the news holding an important position and achieving great things, I feel that it is an achievement for all of us,” she declares.
It is often said that the future of work lies in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) professions.
However, women are underrepresented in them.
In fact, in Honduras only 21.5% of all engineering and technology researchers are women, according to a 2017 UN Women report.
We believe in meritocracy within this process, they earned the position because they are brilliant minds for the project and are very necessary within it.
Fernando Zorto, director of the initiative and professor of Mechanical Engineering at UNAH
For the Honduran astrophysicist Yvelice Castillo, it is urgent that this gender gap in STEM be leveled.
"Those of us in science and technology have to move and motivate more women to train in these careers, otherwise they will be left out of the labor market of the future," she says.
"In that sense, the creation of the Honduran chapter in the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World has been a fabulous step," says the professor at the UNAH Faculty of Astrophysics, the first in Central America created in 2013. "And now we have students who are among the first to develop a satellite in the country, it is something historic that will inspire other women," she says.
However, the gender gap remains within the classroom.
For María Fernanda Pineda, a Systems Engineering graduate, this career is still dominated by men.
Although 65.6% of UNAH graduates in the last quarter of 2021 are women, only 134 graduated in engineering, representing 32.4%.
"There is still a long way to go and we hope to shorten that path so that in the near future we will see more similar numbers between both genders," says the person in charge of
the satellite's flight
software .
Central American integration
The Morazán nanosatellite is the third in Central America.
In 2018, Costa Rica launched the Batsú CS-1 and, two years later, Guatemala launched the Quetzal 1. “At that time I never imagined that Honduras would also do it and that I would participate, I think about it and my eyes fill up. eyes full of tears”, says Gabriela Muñoz, an Electrical Engineering student.
"Now we are standing out with this project as a whole region, it is a rebirth that fills all of Central America with pride," adds the person in charge of the satellite's electrical installations and communications.
Not in vain, the nanosatellite bears the name of the Honduran hero Francisco Morazán, who in the mid-nineteenth century aspired to the integration of Central America into a single nation.
His legacy is present as it is the first space project where three countries in the region collaborate, with the support of the Central American Integration System (SICA).
“At an international level they are seeing us for how we are working together to place something in space and define science policies that generate an impact on society.
The idea is also to analyze the scheme of a Central American space agency”, explains Zorto.
This integration from science is motivating other parts of the isthmus to venture into the space race.
At the end of 2021, for example, El Salvador announced that it will have its first satellite.
“There is always the desire to collaborate with Central America.
We, as Hondurans, are raised and educated in a
Morazán
philosophy , so we dream that the region can unite and what better way to do it than in space, where there are no borders”, points out the engineer.
science without limits
The launch of the satellite will be a boost for the space adventure of Honduras.
But for such a historic step not to remain just another anecdote, a greater investment in the sciences and a culture of generational change is required.
"We have to involve more young people, there is a share in the space market that they will be able to take advantage of and find a career," says Zorto.
Along these lines, Diana Rosales clarifies that for this we must break down the stigmas around science.
"Sometimes we believe that the only ones who can develop science are geniuses and they are usually men, because historically it has been like that, but we all build science, there are no age, religion, culture or sex limits", ensures.
And she concludes: "If we think that only geniuses from a pedestal can do science, our dreams are going to seem unattainable, and they are not."
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