FELIX HERRERA CABELLO
Felix Herrera Cabello was born in Agulo in 1932 and from a very young age moved to live in Santa Cruz de Tenerife where he studied Secundary Education and obteined his degree in Chemical Sciences at the University of La Laguna.
After his bachelor’s degree and like many young people of his generation, he emigrated to Venezuela looking for job opportunities, where he worked as a Process Engineer at the multinational IBM, one of the largest companies in the world at that time.
In 1958, the space age began with the launch of the first Sputnik and the first american artificial satellites, he joined Lima’s Minitrack Station, where he tracked the first artificial satellites. In this way, it can be stated bluntly that this Gomeran was present and was one of the protagonists of the space age.
Between 1958 and 1962, Felix lived through one of the most intense periods of his life: the data provided by those first artificial satellites pointed the way forward for the exploration of space.
In 1962 Felix joined the NASA Space Station in Maspalomas, where he began his experience in manned flights, working as a communications liaison engineer on the Mercury and Gemini projects (1962-1966). That’s when he detected the enormous difficulty in achieving his goal: to establish communication.
He was present at the start of the Apollo program in 1966 and in the orbiting of the first communication satellites, which would finally facilitate their work.
After 17 years working in different NASA programs, he joined the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands in 1974, where he continued to work in the area of Solar Physics and completed his doctoral thesis in Physical Sciences.
In 1984, he joined the Department of Fundamental and Experimental Physics of the University of La Laguna, involving him in the exploration programmes of space, culminating in 1993 with the installation and commissioning of the Communications Laboratory and Remote Sensing (LTC), whose lines of research have allowed training in the field of remote sensing of physicists of different promotions.
In February 2002 Felix published his book La realidad de una ficción. Logros y problemas de la exploración del espacio, in which he reviewed the beginnings and gave an account of the historical background of the exploration of space, addressing in this work the problems of the outer environment, such as the effect of micrometeorites and that of radiation, as well as the consequences of the increase and absence of gravity and space junk.
The Gomeran who worked at NASA, Felix Herrera Cabello, dies on May 23, 2002, just 3 months after the publication of his book.
Félix Herrera Cabello is one of those people who, by avatars of fate, goes unnoticed his effort and contribution to the progress of society. Fortunately, after his death, his work, contributions and dedication to this progress have gradually begun to be valued.
