From Space Infrastructure to Heritage: How Space Systems Produce Heritage

Aerospace heritage is commonly approached through identifying, valuing and preserving sites, objects and landscapes. This paper asks a prior question: how do space systems generate the traces and records from which heritage is later constituted? It treats space infrastructure as the coordinated space-based, ground-based and linking systems through which a mission operates. The argument is anchored in CORONA, the United States’ Cold War photographic reconnaissance programme. Designed as classified intelligence infrastructure, CORONA produced imagery and records that, after declassification, entered archives and became evidence for archaeology, urban history and landscape research. Comparable processes appear beyond Earth: LRO records lunar landing sites and human-made traces, MRO/HiRISE documents Mars landing hardware and rover tracks, and Chang’e-2 generated systematic lunar mapping records. Together, these cases show space systems functioning as infrastructures of observation and recording. From this evidence, the paper identifies three heritage pathways: infrastructure may itself become heritage; its data and records may become evidence for other heritage; and its operations may create material, spatial and documentary traces later interpreted and valued as heritage. It then proposes a lifecycle model of space heritage formation: operation generates traces and records; preservation and access determine what survives; interpretation turns traces into evidence; valuation assigns significance; and recognition brings selected traces into heritage practice. Governance operates across this process, shaping what is recorded, preserved, accessed, protected or erased.