West-to-east transmissions were sent from Goldstone by a 26 m (85 ft) dish antenna built for Project Echo by JPL. Both sites used separate antennas for transmitting and receiving. The Goldstone facility located at Goldstone Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert, California and the Holmdel facility located at Holmdel, New Jersey. Two ground stations were used for testing Project Echo. Ground stations Holmdel Horn Antenna, constructed for Project Echo, and later used to discover the cosmic microwave background radiation. Further experiments used the satellite to engage a two-way telephone conversation on 15 August 1960 and to relay a live television transmission in April 1962. Provide precedent for the overflight of other nations by surveillance satellitesĪll of these objectives were accomplished with Project Echo.Demonstrate commitment to the development of an American space program.Passively reflect ground based transmissions.Observe and measure the effects of atmospheric drag.Echo was designed as an experiment to demonstrate the potential of satellite communications, not to function as a global communications system.Įcho was designed, approved and built with the following objectives: Spaceflight engineers used Echo to prove new ideas and test limits in aerodynamics, satellite shape and size, construction materials, temperature control and satellite tracking. Project Echo was a pathfinder mission with the objective of testing new technologies and preparing for future missions. Project Echo, NASA's first communications satellite project, was officially laid out in a 22 January 1959 meeting with representatives from NASA, JPL, and Bell Telephone Laboratories setting the initial launch for September 1959. That same month, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was formed, and two months later JPL was transferred from the United States Army to the new agency. Believing the experiment would advance research toward transoceanic communications via satellites, the two engineers presented a paper advocating for the launch of balloon satellites to be used as passive communications reflectors to the National Symposium on Extended Range and Space Communication on 6 and 7 October 1958. In October 1958, Pierce, along with fellow Bell engineer Rudolf Kompfner, designed an experiment to observe atmospheric refractive effects using reflective balloon satellites. Pickering, director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), also attended the conference and suggested that JPL facilities, specifically a 26 m (85 ft) diameter polar-mounted antenna installed near Goldstone Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert, might be used as a ground facility for experiments with such a satellite. Pierce put forth a presentation on passive satellite relay, describing how a reflective orbiting body could be used to bounce transmissions from one point on the Earth to another. In July 1958, at a US Air Force sponsored meeting on communications satellites, Bell Telephone Laboratories engineer John R. With the launching of Sputnik 1, Earth's first artificial satellite, in 1957, interest quickly developed in orbiting communications satellites. Experiments using the moon as a passive reflecting way station for messages began as early as 1946. The concept of using orbital satellites to relay communications predated space travel, first being advanced by Arthur C. The last Echo satellite deorbited and burned up in the atmosphere on 7 June 1969. The first transmissions using Echo were sent from Goldstone, California, to Holmdel, New Jersey, on 12 August 1960. Communication signals were transmitted from one location on Earth and bounced off the surface of the satellite to another Earth location. Each of the two American spacecraft, launched in 19, were metalized balloon satellites acting as passive reflectors of microwave signals. Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. Echo 2 undergoing tensile stress test in a dirigible hangar at Weeksville, North Carolina.Ĥ1 m (135 ft) diameter sphere when inflated
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