When working at the INTA of Maspalomas was a risky job (agricultural)

There was a time when the Civil Guard cut off traffic when the Mercury spacecraft crossed the Canary Islands sky and when an astronaut's communications could be lost if a farmer sprayed his tomatoes. They are memories of the beginning of the space race to which NASA pays tribute today. By then, NASA already had an important presence in Spain, with monitoring stations in Robledo de Chavela and Fresnedillas, in Madrid, and in the south of Gran Canaria, but it all started eight years before, next to the Maspalomas lighthouse, with a radar, control equipment and a communications satellite dish.

Before having the large space station that Maspalomas has housed since the Apollo program, an unmanned flight of the Mercury-Atlas program was controlled from there in 1961, six Mercury until 1963 (including that of John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit around the Earth) and ten Gemini (1965-66). For Andrés Rodríguez, the living memory of those early days of NASA's collaboration with Spain, that story began a little earlier and in a very different place: in line at an administrative office in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria processing the paperwork for emigrate to Venezuela.

"I met an acquaintance there who told me: Chacho, wouldn't you be more interested in working with the Americans at NASA, who are looking for technicians? I responded that if they paid well...", he says almost 63 years later This mechanic converted to a specialist in power plants thanks to his military service. And yes, they paid well. NASA then paid four or five times the salary that was charged in the Canary Islands and Andrés Rodríguez became one of the only three Spanish employees of the space program on the islands (over time there were more than 60).

The Americans chose the south of Gran Canaria for its geographical position in the Atlantic, which made it practically the first point with which their ships could communicate after taking off from Cape Canaveral (Florida). But in the sixties there was no electricity there, so the person responsible for the generation equipment that guaranteed that everything worked well and without interruptions was not just another maintenance technician. It was key. It was Andrés.

It is due to this Canarian technician that, over the years, the Maspalomas Space Station continued with adequate maintenance when the US lost interest in the space race.ial and NASA abandoned Gran Canaria. And also that Spain could recover it without major problems for the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), as corroborated by some of its most veteran employees still in service.

However, at 86 years old, Rodríguez does not brag about it, not even about the commemorative coin minted with metal from the Eagle module that transported Neil Armstrong to the Moon, which he received in recognition of his contribution to the Apollo XI mission. "I have another one," he says with a smile. "Apollo VIII," he says, referring to the ship that took an astronaut out of Earth's orbit for the first time. His memory goes back a few years, to the pioneers of the Mercury project and, above all, to John Glenn, the hero who restored the pride of the United States in a space race that was then losing by a landslide against the USSR (which had launched the first satellite, Sputnik, and had taken a man into space for the first time, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin).

Andrés Rodríguez does not forget his words: "Canary station. This is Friendship 7. All controls are OK," he recites from memory. "The party that the Americans had that day with John Glenn was terrible. It was celebrated more than when Armstrong stepped on the Moon." That those words were received in Maspalomas had its charm, first because they were the first confirmation that Glenn was fine after undertaking his first orbit and, later, because in order for them to arrive clearly, NASA (and its Spanish collaborators) had to overcome the previous days. some difficulties never imagined.

Andrés Rodríguez remembers that at that time it was transmitted into space at a very low frequency, very sensitive to interference. Any type of them, whether caused by the spark plugs of a car engine that passed by their facilities in Maspalomas or by agricultural machinery being used nearby, and then the NASA station in Maspalomas was surrounded by tomato plants. Rodríguez relates that in those first Mercury flights the Civil Guard cut off traffic on the access road to Maspalomas - which was beginning to be frequented by European tourists - in the minutes in which it was estimated that the space capsule was passing over them and that NASA He had to agree with the tomato growers when they could spray and when they couldn't.

And the great success of the Apollo program? This pioneer remembers it more normally: "Since the Mércury, nothing surprised me anymore," he says. It was the natural consequence of the entire process that had been followed before, he argues. And on July 21, 1969, there he was among the select few who heard live that historic phrase "It's one small step for a man, but one big leap for Humanity" and also among the few who saw the enormous difficulties. that Armstrong and Aldrin had to land their ship.

OLD PICTURES:  JUAN FRANCO LÓPEZ