Qualla: Espacio Lejano Station https://qualla.com/espacio-lejano-station en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:57 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/n/n/espacio-lejano-station-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Espacio Lejano Station https://qualla.com/espacio-lejano-station Espacio Lejano Station: Introduction https://qualla.com/espacio-lejano-station/ Photo credit Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders, Public domain. Drive provincial route 33 north of Bajada del Agrio and the landscape gives you almost nothing: wind, scrub, the dry bed of the Salado River, the Pampa de Pilmatue stretching flat to the horizon. Then a white dish breaks the skyline, 35 meters across, tilted toward space. This is Espacio Lejano, the first deep-space tracking station China ever built outside its own borders. It sits on two square kilometers of leased Patagonian desert, and what it does, and for whom, has become one of the more contested questions in Argentine politics.

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Image: Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders | Public domain

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/n/n/espacio-lejano-station-wp/63nn-espacio-lejano-station-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Espacio Lejano Station: An Antenna at the End of the World https://qualla.com/espacio-lejano-station/ Photo credit Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders, Public domain. Patagonia is good for listening to space precisely because so little else happens here. The skies are dark, the air is dry, and the radio noise of cities is hundreds of kilometers away. China chose the site for its position deep in the Southern Hemisphere, which lets the station ...

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Image: Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders | Public domain

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/n/n/espacio-lejano-station-wp/63nn-espacio-lejano-station-an-antenna-at-the-end-of-the-world.mp3 0:06 2 full Espacio Lejano Station: Voices from the Far Side of the Moon https://qualla.com/espacio-lejano-station/ Photo credit Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders, Public domain. The station earns its name. Espacio Lejano, deep space, is part of the Chinese Deep Space Network that guides robotic missions across the solar system. Its most celebrated moment came in January 2019, when China's Chang'e 4 spacecraft set a lander and rover down on the far side o...

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Image: Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders | Public domain

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/n/n/espacio-lejano-station-wp/63nn-espacio-lejano-station-voices-from-the-far-side-of-the-moon.mp3 0:06 3 full Espacio Lejano Station: The Black Box on the Steppe https://qualla.com/espacio-lejano-station/ Photo credit Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders, Public domain. The trouble is what Argentina cannot see. The land was leased to the Chinese government in 2012 for fifty years, tax-free, and the network is overseen by a Chinese military space organization, a fact that has alarmed neighbors, journalists, think tanks, and the United States gove...

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Image: Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders | Public domain

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/n/n/espacio-lejano-station-wp/63nn-espacio-lejano-station-the-black-box-on-the-steppe.mp3 0:06 4 full Espacio Lejano Station: Two Dishes, Two Powers https://qualla.com/espacio-lejano-station/ Photo credit Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders, Public domain. Espacio Lejano is not the only foreign antenna pointed at the heavens from Argentine soil, and the comparison is part of why it draws such scrutiny. A few hundred kilometers north, near Malargue in Mendoza Province, the European Space Agency runs a strikingly similar 35-meter dee...

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Image: Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders | Public domain

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/n/n/espacio-lejano-station-wp/63nn-espacio-lejano-station-two-dishes-two-powers.mp3 0:06 5 full Espacio Lejano Station: A Visit, Briefly Promised https://qualla.com/espacio-lejano-station/ Photo credit Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders, Public domain. The argument flared again in 2024. After the U.S. ambassador to Argentina publicly criticized the station, the new government of President Javier Milei said it wanted to inspect the site for compliance with the lease. The promise of real scrutiny shrank quickly. What actually hap...

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Image: Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders | Public domain

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/3/n/n/espacio-lejano-station-wp/63nn-espacio-lejano-station-a-visit-briefly-promised.mp3 0:06 6 full