Participation of Bell Telephone Laboratories in Project Echo and Experimental Results

Page 1021 1023 1025 1000 970 97G 077 980 982 983 980 988 992 995 995 990 1020 1027 l.i Purposes of the Project Echo Experiments Several years ago Bell Telephone Laboratories became interested in studying the feasibility of providing long distance communication facilities by means of reflection from orbiting earth satellites. Participation in NASA's Project Echo was undertaken as a first active step in this program, and it was hoped that the following objectives would be achieved: i. To demonstrate two-way voice communication between the east and west coasts. ii. To study the propagation properties of the medium, including the effects of the atmosphere, the ionosphere, and the balloon. iii. To determine the usefulness of various kinds of satellite tracking procedures. iv. To determine the usefulness of a passive communications satellite of the Echo I type. It was anticipated that these objectives would be achieved primarily by conducting operations with the balloon launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the satellite-tracking facility of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) located at Goldstone, California, about one hundred miles northeast of Los Angeles, The Bell