Video: When NASA did the Three Kings Parade in Maspalomas

There was a time when children in the south of Gran Canaria received gifts from the Three Kings from the INTA. The base that NASA used in 1969 at the Maspalomas Space Center, which was decisive in the success of the Apollo 11 mission, was put into the pockets of the locals and that is never forgotten among those humble families who share their vision among tomato trees and antennas that monitored the world. Currently dependent on the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), the Maspalomas station was built in the late XNUMXs by NASA, at the beginning of the space race. It was the first center of its kind installed in Europe and one of the few places in the world where the American space race was supported." From that time the names of the technicians of the center enabled by NASA in Maspalomas remain: Andrés Rodríguez, Francisco Almeida, Rafael Santana, Benjamín González, Manuel Rivero and Valeriano Claros-Guerra, as well as Manuel Pestana, José Sarmiento and Carmelo del Pino.

Valeriano Claros-Guerra, who after passing through Maspalomas, was for years representative of the European Space Agency in Spain. From Gran Canaria, support was also given to other operations, such as that provided to the first manned space station and the provision of one of the three solar observatories that warned astronauts of particles released from the sun that could collide with the ship or against the lunar surface. The function of this center during the Apollo 11 mission was to "provide continuity to the tracking of the ship", something that could only be done from Cape Canaveral (United States), Australia and Gran Canaria.