Hacking a path through dense jungle with a machete. Capturing and eating iguanas. Sleeping in hammocks above the jungle floor to avoid venomous insect bites. It may sound like an episode of \u201cSurvivor\u201d but this scenario is from a 1963 jungle survival training conducted in Panama for the NASA space flight crews of Projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.<\/p>\n
Brian Odom, NASA chief historian, says that \u201cBecause this was all so new, NASA astronauts were required to train for every possible situation, from splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, as planned, to contingency plans if something goes wrong on re-entry landing in Earth\u2019s extreme environments, such as desert or jungle.\u201d This meant Panama\u2019s jungle was the best place for astronauts in NASA\u2019s first crewed spacecraft missions to the Moon to train.<\/p>\n
A June 6, 1963, NASA press release announced that four spacecraft center personnel and 16 astronauts chosen for Projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo would attend the United States Air Force Tropic Survival School at the former Albrook Air Force Base in Panama\u2019s Canal Zone. Anthropologist, botanist and World War II veteran H. Morgan Smith was the school\u2019s director. <\/p>\n
This would be the first time that the astronauts received tropical survival training in a course that also included \u201cinstruction of Indigenous people in the tropic areas, native customs, native foods and the proper method of approaching these people, enlisting their aid, and communication with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Far-Flung Partners<\/p>\n
Panama\u2019s Indigenous Ember\u00e1 people\u2019s ancestral knowledge was accumulated over hundreds of years of living in the jungle, which was fundamental to the USAF school\u2019s survival field training program, \u201cthe only one of its kind operated by a United States agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ember\u00e1 Chief Manuel Antonio Zarco and his team of Ember\u00e1 instructors conducted the training. Historically, the Ember\u00e1 people were called Choc\u00f3 because they originally came from Colombia\u2019s Choc\u00f3 region bordering Panama (Panama was part of Colombia until 1903).<\/p>\n
In the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project transcript of a 2022 interview with Director H. Morgan Smith, he talks about first meeting Chief Zarco in Panama in 1952. Smith was an anthropology graduate student when Chief Zarco \u201cadopted\u201d him: \u201cI didn\u2019t know (it) at the time, he is the senior elder of the entire tribe of some 30,000 people (in Panama and Colombia ). I hunted, fished, swam, did all those things that they do, with them, to learn about ethnobotany from their standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ember\u00e1-led jungle survival training for NASA mirrored Smith\u2019s educational experience under Chief Zarco\u2019s tutelage. Following several days of intense classroom instruction at USAF Albrook Base, the astronauts underwent rigorous field training spending two nights and three days in Panama\u2019s jungle. Exercises focused on how to find and purify water, fish and hunt for animals, forage for edible plants, find dry wood to build a fire and construct palm leaf-sapling lean-to shelters.To authentically simulate a spacecraft\u2019s emergency jungle landing, the astronauts were dressed in only their boots and the long underwear they wore under their space pressure suits, which would have to be discarded upon landing.<\/p>\n
Apollo astronauts Don Lind and Bill Pogue\u2019s anecdotal accounts of the arduous training appear in \u201cThe Last of NASA\u2019s Original Pilot Astronauts, Expanding the Space Frontier in the Late 1960s\u201d published in 2017. Lind recounted how while tromping in the jungle they \u201c\u2026 suddenly came across a huge, seven-foot fer-de-lance, an extremely venomous reptile that could easily paralyze a man. The snake was captured and placed in a burlap bag. The guide assured the astronauts it would only strike things it could see, so stuffed inside the sack where it was dark, the deadly snake would remain calm.\u201d While Pogue joked about the challenges of foraging for food: \u201c \u2026 we speculated whether the energy we consumed from eating the heart of the palm was as great as the energy expended in harvesting it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith praises the Ember\u00e1 instructors for their inclusive, team-building training approach: \u201cThese men, \u2026 would work eight days a week and twenty-six hours a day for the United States, and they were dedicated, absolutely. [I can\u2019t] say enough for them. \u2026 The success of the school and why NASA was interested was because of [the professionalism of] those men.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Mutual Belief in the Moon<\/p>\n
Chief Zarco\u2019s daughter Natalia Sarco works as an ecologist and bird-watching guide in Panama City\u2019s Metropolitan National Park. The former Canal Zone\u2019s 573-acre park was a site of the Albrook survival school camps, which included one on the Panama-Colombia border in remote Dari\u00e9n National Park, also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.<\/p>\n
She says, \u201cMy father felt an immediate connection with the astronauts because our ancestors and older Ember\u00e1 people today believe that when our souls leave the Earth, they go to the Moon, and from there they watch us and protect us down here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief Zarco trained Abdiel Iv\u00e1n Batista, a master jungle rescue instructor who is the director of the Chagres Survival School, CEO of the Safe Jungles Foundation and member of the Panamanian Red Cross First Aid Corps. He says that living in the Central American jungle requires respect for it. Batista likens the jungle environment to a \u201cbrotherhood\u201d because, according to Ember\u00e1 beliefs, every plant, animal, insect has a spirit and they are all connected. \u201cThis is why Ember\u00e1 people do not view the jungle as dangerous, but see it as a perfect balance where the spirits support one another,\u201d Batista says.<\/p>\n
In a lecture he gives on the evolution of jungle survival training, equipment and technology, Batista shares an anecdotal story he was told of the astronauts\u2019 first day of jungle field training in 1963. After Chief Zarco and his instructor team heard that the Americans were going to the Moon, Zarco said, \u201cWhen a Chocoe (Choc\u00f3 ) dies, his soul goes to the Moon.\u201d At which point, John Glenn, moved by the statement, stepped up to Chief Zarco and firmly shook his hand.<\/p>\n
Glenn\u2019s sincere gesture inspired by their mutual affinity for the Moon, \u201cJedeco\u201d in the Ember\u00e1 language, established mutual respect and trust. \u201cAll the astronauts shared a bond of friendship with Chief Zarco, especially John Glenn and Neil Armstrong,\u201d says Batista. \u201cThey came back to visit, as did many American soldiers who returned to Panama to tell Chief Zarco that his training was a big reason why they survived in Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n
From 1955 to 1975, Chief Zarco and his team trained over 10,000 members of the U.S. Military in jungle survival, including Army Special Forces; pilots for the Navy, Army and Marine Corps; and other federal agencies. He also trained members of Latin American air forces. In Batist\u00e1\u2019s lecture, he refers to records citing a total of 17,000 military who were trained by Chief Zarco during his tenure at the USAF Tropic Survival School, which closed in 1975.<\/p>\n
Chief Zarco received the Distinguished Public Service Medal, the most prestigious civilian honor awarded by the United States Department of Defense, in 1971. NASA\u2019s astronauts gave him the prized Silver Snoopy Award for his significant contributions supporting human spaceflight safety and mission success. Later in life, Zarco traveled to the United States for speaking engagements at universities, New York City\u2019s Explorers Club and the Smithsonian.<\/p>\n
In March 2010, Chief Zarco died at the age of 96. Sarco says, \u201cWhile I am proud of my father\u2019s work training astronauts and helping save American soldiers\u2019 lives, I am most proud of him because he showed us a long time ago that even with big language barriers and cultural differences, we can find ways to communicate and help each other.\u201d Now, to keep her father\u2019s legacy alive and preserve Ember\u00e1 culture for future generations, Sarco works with Panama\u2019s Balaena Travel accompanying visitors traveling in long wooden canoes up the Chagres River to Ember\u00e1 village Parar\u00e1-Pur\u00fa. Inside a large thatched-roof pavilion, visitors experience traditional dances, artistry, crafts and food that villagers fish and forage in the jungle. Through Balaena tour guide Mel Sanchez\u2019s translation of the villagers\u2019 presentations, visitors learn about Ember\u00e1 people\u2019s role in training NASA astronauts.<\/p>\n
Panama joins the Artemis Accords<\/p>\n
On December 11, 2024, Panama became the 49th country and the first Central American nation to join the Artemis Accords, an international, nonbinding agreement composed of principles to guide civil space exploration and use.<\/p>\n
Panama\u2019s Ambassador to the United States Jos\u00e9 Miguel Alem\u00e1n Healy, who signed the agreement, says, \u201cFor Panama, the Artemis Accords are a natural continuation of what we\u2019ve always stood for: peace, cooperation and the responsible use of what belongs to us all.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2020, The U.S. Department of State, NASA and the seven original signatory nations established the Artemis Accords. Ambassador Alem\u00e1n believes that the Accords strengthen the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which provided an international legal framework to govern nations\u2019 conduct in space. <\/p>\n
Today, the Artemis Accords\u2019 56 signatory nations share a vision for peaceful, sustainable and transparent cooperation in space.From a purely historical perspective, Panama\u2019s role in NASA astronaut survival training and the cultural engagement it fostered was perhaps a nascent expression of 21st century space diplomacy underpinning the Artemis Accords\u2019 principles.<\/p>\n
Ambassador Alem\u00e1n views international collaboration in space as \u201cessential to human survival\u201d on Earth, saying, \u201cThe NASA astronaut jungle training program \u2026 in the1960s not only prepared astronauts for extreme environments, but also established a historical link between studying our natural environment and exploring space.\u201d<\/p>\n
USA Today \u2013 Kit Bernardi, Studio Gannett<\/p>\n
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