THE SATELLITE COAST
The Satellite Coast research project (2024-2026) has been funded by the National Science Foundation (ID 2420069) and explores the relationship between commercial satellite launching and historically underrepresented communities in California. Focusing on the central coast town of Lompoc, the study investigates how intensified commercial satellite launching is impacting Indigenous Chumash groups, farmworkers, and incarcerated persons who live and work adjacent to the Vandenberg Space Force Base. In the process, the project explores relations between aerospace, agriculture, and prison sectors in the community, local public education and workforce development, and environmental and public health effects of launch noise and emissions. The project’s significance is grounded in its integration of diverse community perspectives in understanding and evaluating the local effects of satellite launching. The study supports public knowledge of federally subsidized launch infrastructure and satellite technologies and provides collaborative research and educational opportunities for community members and university students. Reports, graphics, and publications from our study will be publicly available on our project website.
Leveraging partnerships with community organizations, the study uses ethnographic methods to conduct focus groups, interviews, and correspondence programs that convey how historically marginalized communities think about and perceive increasing satellite launches in their midst. What are the experiences of socially marginalized publics who live and work adjacent to launch infrastructure? The major goals of the project are to: 1) understand how satellite launching from Vandenberg impacts both the local community and the global satellite industry; 2) investigate the social, cultural, and environmental impacts of commercial satellite launching; 3) learn how members of minority communities think about the Vandenberg base, satellite launching, aerospace, and STEM education; and 4) draw on qualitative data to theorize how sociotechnical relations of adjacency, diversity, and cosmology alter understandings of launch infrastructure and satellite technology. The study will contribute to STS research on satellite technology and infrastructure, the aerospace sector, and race/ethnicity and technology.
Research Project Presentations (select)
Lisa Parks, “Infrastructural Adjacencies: Chumash Histories, Archaeology, and SpaceX Operations at the Vandenberg Space Force Base,” History of Science Society/European History of Science Society Annual Conference, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, July 16, 2026
Sophia Abbey & Tara Plath, “Offsetting Risk in the New Space Era,” SIGCIS 2026 Conference, UC Berkeley, June 2026
Sophia Abbey, Susannah Abbey, Lisa Parks, Tara Plath, Althea Wasow, “Satellite Coast Research Project: Community Drawing Workshop,” Lompoc, May 23, 2026
Lisa Parks, “The Satellite Coast: Vandenberg Space, SpaceX, and Relations of Infrastructural Adjacency,” Dallas Smythe Memorial Distinguished Lecture, College of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, April 9, 2026
Sophia Abbey, Carlos Jimenez, Lisa Parks, Tara Plath, Althea Wasow, “The Satellite Coast Research Project: Preliminary Findings,” Alpha Club, Lompoc Community Presentation, Feb. 20, 2026
Lisa Parks & Sophia Abbey, “Launch Site Underworlds: Chumash History, Archaeology, and SpaceX Operations at the Vandenberg Space Force Base,” American Studies Association Conference, Nov. 2025
Carlos Jimenez, “Where Farms Meet the Sky: Examining Farmworkers and the Rocket Launches in Lompoc, California,” American Studies Association Conference, Puerto Rico, Nov. 2025
Althea Wasow, “Histories and Speculative Futures of Vandenberg Space Force Base and Lompoc Federal Prison,” American Studies Association Conference, Puerto Rico, Nov. 2025
Lisa Parks, “Ashes to Orbit,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Chicago, March 2025
Lisa Parks, "The ‘Satellite Imaging Race’: The NRO, Remote Sensing, and Intensified Commercialization,” Big Data and Society Colloquium, University of Kansas, Nov. 20, 2024
We are in the process of developing a dedicated website for the Satellite Coast Research Project working with StorySpring. Website will launch in summer 2026.
Project Team, 2024-26
Lisa Parks (PI, UC Santa Barbara), Althea Wasow (co-PI, UC Santa Barbara), Carlos Jimenez (co-PI, University of Denver)
Ricardo Mata Vazquez, Grad Student Researcher. Sophia Abbey, Grad Student Researcher.
Chicano/a Studies Film and Media Studies
Project Gallery
Project team 2023-24: Lisa Parks, Ranna Zahabi, Kim Yasuda, Tara Plath
Our data visualizations reveal significant increases in rocket and satellite launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base
The Lompoc area has been developed by agriculture, military-aerospace, prison, extractive, and housing industries.
