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Project Echo
Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. Each of the two American spacecraft, launched in 1960 and 1964, were metalized balloon satellites acting as passive reflectors of microwave signals. Communication signals were transmitted from one location on Earth and bounced off the surface of the satellite to another Earth location. The first transmissions using Echo were sent from Goldstone, California, to Crawford Hill in Holmdel, New Jersey, on 12 August 1960. The last Echo satellite deorbited and burned up in the atmosphere on 7 June 1969.Astronautix.com, ''Echo''


Background

The concept of using orbital satellites to relay communications predated space travel, first being advanced by
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Weeksville Dirigible Hangar
The Weeksville Dirigible Hangar (former Naval Air Station Weeksville) is an airship manufacturing, storage and test facility originally built by the United States Navy in 1941 for servicing airships conducting anti-submarine patrols of the US coast and harbors. It is located on the former Naval Air Station Weeksville in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, approximately 2 miles southeast of the present day Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City. Background At the beginning of World War II, Naval Air Station Lakehurst, established in 1921, was the only active lighter-than-air (LTA) naval air station operated by the US Navy. In 1940, the US Navy proposed to the US Congress the development of a lighter-than-air station program for anti-submarine patrols of the coast and harbors. This program proposed, in addition to the expansion at Lakehurst and the reestablishment of Naval Air Station Moffett Field as a naval LTA station, the construction of new stations in the Boston, Cape May, Cape ...
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Communications Satellite
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a Transponder (satellite communications), transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a Radio receiver, receiver at different locations on Earth. Communications satellites are used for television, telephone, radio, internet, and military applications. Many communications satellites are in geostationary orbit above the equator, so that the satellite appears stationary at the same point in the sky; therefore the satellite dish antennas of ground stations can be aimed permanently at that spot and do not have to move to track the satellite. Others form satellite constellations in low Earth orbit, where antennas on the ground have to follow the position of the satellites and switch between satellites frequently. The radio waves used for telecommunications links travel by Line-of-sight propagation, line of sight and so are obstructe ...
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by NASA and administered and managed by Caltech. The primary function of the laboratory is the construction and operation of planetary robotic spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN). Among the major active projects at the laboratory, some are the Mars 2020 mission, which includes the ''Perseverance (rover), Perseverance'' rover; the Mars Science Laboratory mission, including the ''Curiosity (rover), Curiosity'' rover; the ''Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter''; the ''Juno (spacecraft), Juno'' spacecraft orbiting Jupiter; the ''Soil Moisture Active P ...
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Bill Pickering (rocket Scientist)
William Hayward Pickering (24 December 1910 – 15 March 2004) was a New Zealand-born aerospace engineer who headed Pasadena, California, Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22 years, retiring in 1976. He was a senior NASA luminary and pioneered the exploration of space. Pickering was also a founding member of the United States National Academy of Engineering. Origins and education Born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 24 December 1910, Pickering attended Havelock, New Zealand, Havelock School (also attended by Ernest Rutherford), Marlborough Region, Marlborough, and Wellington College (New Zealand), Wellington College. After spending a year at the University of Canterbury, Canterbury University College, he moved to the United States (where he subsequently naturalized), to complete a bachelor's degree at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and later, in 1936, a PhD in Physics. His speciality was in Electrical Engineering, and he majored in w ...
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John R
John R. (born John Richbourg, August 20, 1910 – February 15, 1986) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame in the 1950s and 1960s for playing rhythm and blues music on Nashville radio station WLAC. He was also a notable record producer and artist manager. Richbourg was arguably the most popular and charismatic of the four announcers at WLAC who showcased popular African-American music in nightly programs from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. (The other three were Gene Nobles, Herman Grizzard, and Bill "Hoss" Allen.) Later rock music disc jockeys, such as Alan Freed and Wolfman Jack, mimicked Richbourg's practice of using speech that simulated African-American street language of the mid-twentieth century. Richbourg's highly stylized approach to on-air presentation of both music and advertising earned him popularity, but it also created identity confusion. Because Richbourg and fellow disc jockey Allen used African-American speech patterns, many listeners thought t ...
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United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal Corps, the USAF was established by transfer of personnel from the Army Air Forces with the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947. It is the second youngest branch of the United States Armed Forces and the fourth in United States order of precedence, order of precedence. The United States Air Force articulates its core missions as air supremacy, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance, global integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, airlift, rapid global mobility, Strategic bombing, global strike, and command and control. The United States Department of the Air Force, Department of the Air Force, which serves as the USAF's ...
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Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 (, , ''Satellite 1''), sometimes referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for three weeks before its three silver-zinc batteries became depleted. Aerodynamic drag caused it to fall back into the atmosphere on 4 January 1958. It was a polished metal sphere in diameter with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. Its radio signal was easily detectable by amateur radio operators, and the 65° orbital inclination made its flight path cover virtually the entire inhabited Earth. The satellite's success was unanticipated by the United States. This precipitated the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space Race. The launch was the beginning of a new era of political, military, technological, and scientific developments. The word ''sputnik'' is Russian for ...
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Arthur C
Arthur is a masculine given name of uncertain etymology. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. A common spelling variant used in many Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages is Artur. In Spanish and Italian it is Arturo. Etymology The earliest attestation of the name Arthur is in the early 9th century Welsh-Latin text '' Historia Brittonum'', where it refers to a circa 5th century Romano-British general who fought against the invading Saxons, and who later gave rise to the famous King Arthur of medieval legend and literature. A possible earlier mention of the same man is to be found in the epic Welsh poem '' Y Gododdin'' by Aneirin, which some scholars assign to the late 6th century, though this is still a matter of debate and the poem only survives in a late 13th century manuscript entitled the Book of Aneirin. A 9th-century Breton landowner named Arthur witnessed several charters collected in the '' Cartulary of Redon''. The Irish ...
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Holmdel Township, New Jersey
Holmdel is a township in Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Located near Raritan Bay in the Raritan Valley Region, the township is a regional commercial hub of Central Jersey, home to Bell Labs and PNC Bank Arts Center, and a bedroom community of New York City in the New York Metropolitan Area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the township's population was 17,400, an increase of 627 (+3.7%) from the 2010 census count of 16,773, which in turn reflected an increase of 992 (+6.3%) from the 15,781 counted in the 2000 census. Holmdel Township was formed by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 23, 1857, from portions of Raritan Township (now Hazlet).Snyder, John P''The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968'' Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. p. 180. Accessed May 29, 2024. The origin of the township's name is unclear, with some sources indicating that it was named for the Holmes family, who were early settlers of the ...
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Crawford Hill
Crawford Hill, sometimes known in the past as Crawford's Hill, is located in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, United States. It is Monmouth County's highest point, as well as the highest point in New Jersey's coastal plain, standing above sea level. The hill is best known as the site of a Bell Telephone Laboratories facility that was an annex to the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex located three miles away. The annex property comprises a main research building and a number of other structures and scientific instruments, among them the historic Holmdel Horn Antenna. The hill Crawford Hill is part of the cuesta known as the Atlantic highlands landform of New Jersey. In such form it the highest of a series of rolling crests that recede from the shoreline. In the past it was a wooded area overlooking the first farms in the area. It is named after one of the longstanding, prominent families of Holmdel, a name which goes back to an early figure in the area, William H. Crawford. Its h ...
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Goldstone, California
The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC), commonly called the Goldstone Observatory, is a satellite ground station located in Fort Irwin in the U.S. state of California. Operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), its main purpose is to track and communicate with interplanetary space missions. It is named after Goldstone, California, a nearby gold-mining ghost town. The station is one of three satellite communication stations in the NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program’s Deep Space Network (DSN), whose mission is to provide the vital two-way communications link that tracks and controls interplanetary spacecraft and receives the images and scientific information they collect. The others are the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Spain and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia. These three stations are located at separations of approximately 120° longitude so that as the Earth rotates a spacecraft wil ...
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Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering Water distribution on Earth, 70.8% of Earth's crust. The remaining 29.2% of Earth's crust is land, most of which is located in the form of continental landmasses within Earth's land hemisphere. Most of Earth's land is at least somewhat humid and covered by vegetation, while large Ice sheet, sheets of ice at Polar regions of Earth, Earth's polar polar desert, deserts retain more water than Earth's groundwater, lakes, rivers, and Water vapor#In Earth's atmosphere, atmospheric water combined. Earth's crust consists of slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth's outer core, Earth has a liquid outer core that generates a ...
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