History of Satellite Communications
The first idea of satellite communication came from an article in 1945 named Wireless World, where Author C. Clarke described the use of manned satellites in 24 hour orbits to distribute television programs. However, the first person to carefully evaluate the technical and financial aspects of such a venture was John R. Pierce of Bell Telephone Laboratories (Whalen, n.d.).
In a 1954 speech and 1955 article, Pierce described the usefulness of a communications "mirror" in space, a medium-orbit "repeater" and a 24-hour-orbit "repeater." In comparing the communications capacity of a satellite, which he estimated the capacity at 1,000 simultaneous telephone calls, and the capacity of the first trans-atlantic telephone cable, which could carry 36 simultaneous telephone calls at a cost of 30-50 million dollars, Pierce wondered if a satellite would be worth a billion dollars (Whalen, n.d.).
By the middle of 1961, RCA had a contract with NASA to build, a 4000 mile high, medium-orbit, active communications satellite called RELAY, AT&T was working on its own medium-orbit satellite called TELSTAR, and Hughes Aircraft Company had an exclusive contract to build a 24-hour orbit, 20,000 mile high satellite, called SYNCOM. By 1964, two TELSTARs, two RELAYs, and two SYNCOMs had operated successfully in space. The transponder technology used by AT&T in the TELSTAR I satellite is current technology in use today (Whalen, n.d.).
On April 6, 1965, a new company called COMSAT launched its first satellite, EARLY BIRD, from Cape Canaveral beginning Global satellite communications. The EARLY BIRD satellite provided almost 10 times the capacity of submarine telephone cables for almost 1/10th the price. Satellites are still competitive with cable for point-to-point communications, but the future advantage may lie with fiber-optic cable (Whalen, n.d.).
How Satellites Work
Orbit
First, as one would guess, satellites are launched into orbit. There are several types of orbit for satellites to follow but the main three are Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO). Satellites in a Low Earth Orbit are 100-300 miles above the earth's surface, and it must travel around 17,500 mph, circling the planet in about 10 minutes, to avoid gravity pulling them back to earth. In a Medium Earth Orbit, a satellite is 6,00012,000 miles above the earth and will circle the planet 4 to 6 hours. The Geosynchronous Orbit is a bit more complex, this orbit is 22,282 miles above the earth.
Radio waves were first discovered in 1887, but radio itself was initially invented by Italian Guglielmo Marconi in 1895 (1). His biggest mentioned success was in 1901, when he managed to broadcast the letter “S” across the Atlantic Ocean (1). However, he focused primarily on point-to-point transmissions, not large scale broadcasts from one point (F). As such, three American inventors - Lee De Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff - took credit for making radio as it is today a success (F). De Forest was born and raised in Alabama and he thought of everything in terms of patents and eventually held more than 300, but many claimed that he simply stole the inventions of others (2). In 1900, he patented a device to enhance weak signals and in 1902, he formed the De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company (1). In the same year. Reginald Fessenden, a Canadian, invented the “electrolytic detector”, which later became the spade detector that brought De Forest so much fame (F). In 1904, John Fleming invented the oscillation valve, which later became De Forest’s audion, and De Forest won the gold medal at the St. Louis World’s Fair for his “spade detector” (F). De Forest gained quite a bit of fame by broadcasting music live from the Eiffel Tower and from the Metropolitan Opera; however, many believed that this was a scam and that he had actually had the device broadcasting the signal only a few blocks away (F). In 1906, he envisioned bringing music and voices to all American households, but as it turns out Canadian inventor Fessenden had already broadcasted a Christmas greeting and music to the crew of a ship off the coast of Canada on Christmas Eve a year earlier (F). In 1912, Armstrong became prominent by inventing regeneration, wh...
The cold war by the late 1950s had weaved into the everyday life of society for both countries. The announcement from the US that they will launch a satellite into orbit was challenged by the Soviets. On October 4th 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. This was the world’s first artificial satellite and man-made object to be in earths orbit. The launch was unexpected to the US, having caught them off guard. As a result Sputnik began to raise fears amongst the public, fearing the possible event of a nuclear attack, due to previous cold war
...1957. It was a very basic satellite and let out beeps every few seconds. This was very surprising to the US. They did not think that the Soviets had the knowledge of anything as complicated as a satellite. As a result of the launch of Sputnik the US began to put greater emphasis on science and engineering in education. They also began to try extra hard to develop space technology.
Unlike their Soviet counterparts, who were subject to "government-sponsored terror", American scientists faced more favorable conditions (Eaton par. 3). American scientists also received tremendous public support, and many inventions often benefited everyday life (Eaton par. 4). An importance source of motivation for those involved in the United States' space efforts was the fact that research led to the development of many pieces of everyday technology. Technology such as "wireless communications" was derived from NASA's research ("Space Race" par. 24). These technologies not only benefited NASA, but they also benefited ordinary life. In addition, the American space program received a high amount of public support. Media, including television, films, and magazines, developed public awareness and public support for space exploration (Nagel and Hermsen
Launch of the herms in 1976 was world’s first direct to home experimental telecommunication satellite.
NSSS states a few current trends in space as being “congested and contested” (NSSS, 8), which is shaping our space strategic environment as well as fueling debates for space weapons. “Congested” trend refers to the current “60 nations and government consortia that own and operate satellites and the expectation to have 9000 satellite communication transponders in orbit by 2015.
In 1957 the Soviets used a missile to launch a satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit around the earth. The arms race then became a space race as the United States rushed to launch its own satellites, some for military purposes.
Would people be willing to pay $12.50/month for commercial free radio beamed right to their car or home. Well two companies and many big investors are betting about $3 billion dollars that people are willing to do just that. In 1997, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) granted a portion of the S-band spectrum for satellite radio and two companies purchased use of these bands and started the only two companies competing in the satellite radio business today, namely Sirius and XM. Analysts like William Kidd of CE Unterberg Towpin, predict satellite radio will generate about $10 billion a year in revenues by 2007 (McClean, 2001). However, to date neither of these companies has earned a dime. According to industry analyst though, “its not whether satellite radio will take off-rather it’s a matter of how fast.” (Helyar, 2004). Despite lofty predictions, satellite radio has some big issues to overcome before it becomes a serious threat to the $19.6 billion per year terrestrial radio industry.
The second service to use the satellite was a local television station in Atlanta that broadcast primarily sports and classic movies. The station, owned by R.E Turner, substituted its existing microwave distribution with satellite distribution, and soon became known as the first "super station" WTBS.By the end of the decade, nearly 15 million households were cable subscribers.
SIRIUS Satellite Radio was incorporated on May 17, 1990 as Satellite CD Radio Inc. On November 18th 1999 the company changed their name to SIRIUS Satellite Radio Inc, which is the name under which the FCC license to distribute satellite radio was given to. SIRIUS Satellite radio currently offers over 100 of music, news, sports, talk, entertainment, traffic, weather, and children’s programming to subscribers throughout the United States.
Plumb, Robert K. "Satellite is First Step Into Space." New York Times, October 5, 1957. [URL] Accessed May 22, 2003.
In 1958, the United States’ first satellite, Explorer I, was launched. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun directed the creation of this satellite, which was designed by the U.S. Army. This was also around the time that the president at the time, Dwight Eisenhower, signed a public order to create NASA, or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA is a federal agency that focuses on space exploration. Currently, NASA has quite a few rovers and orbiters out. They are also doing some advanced research.
In the 1960’s NASA started to conduct studies into a large space telescope and after being denied funding multiple times because of the estimated $500 million price tag to build the Hubble telescope it finally received congressional approval in 1977, after reducing the estimated cost to $200 million. Five companies were awarded contracts to begin work on the Hubble telescope. Marshall Space Flight Center did the design, development and construction of the Hubble, Goddard Space Flight Center designed, developed and constructed the science instruments, Perkin-3lmer Corporation built the telescope assembly and Fine Guidance Sensors, Lockheed Martin built the structure and supporting systems and also put the telescope all together and tested it. (http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/hubble_essentials/#work)
Every invention ever known to man had pioneers or people who contributed to the creation of the product. Radio had many pioneers that allowed for its creation and their names are Heinrich Hertz, Nikola Tesla, Ernst Alexander, Edwin Armstrong, Guglielmo Marconi, Lee DeForest, Frank Conrad, Reginald Fessenden, and Edward Armstrong. It all started with a German physicist named Heinrich Hertz who in 1884 proved that you could transmit and receive electric waves wirelessly. Hertz thought that the work he had done had no use whatsoever but little did he know that what he done is considered the fundamental building block of radio, and that is the reason why every frequency measurement is named after him (Short). In that same year a Serbian-American inventor named Nikola Tesla came to the U.S and sold patents to his inventions to a man named George Westinghouse. After that Tesla established his own lab which is where he built the tesla coil , an induction coil that is still used in radio today (Short). The next progression of radio focused on more than just the transmission of waves, the new focus was transmission of speech. The first to begin to add speech into the radio mix was Ernst Alexander, a Sweden born inventor who developed the first alternator to make speech transmission possible (Short). This was so new to the s...
An example of a communications satellite is the EchoStar 3. It is used to send TV signals to homes in North America. For this simple use of broadcasting TV through these technical machines, there are over one hundred communications satellites orbiting earth today. Communication satellites are also used as relay stations in space. People use them to bounce messages from one part of the world to another. These messages can be telephone calls, TV pictures, or even Internet connections. Many communications satellites have footprints. Communication satellites like the EchoStar 3 are in a geosynchronous orbit. This means that the satellite always stays over one spot on Earth. The area on Earth that it can see is called the satellite's footprint. For example a footprint that covers all of Africa can be used by one person to send a message to another person in Africa. One could also use communications satellites as relay stations to send messages to people over a system of satellites with many footprints.