Today we celebrate the 50th day of remembrance of Echo 1 , history ’s first peaceful satellite . NASA ’s Echo mission get down rather poorly . A mental test launch had burst forth so bright , so spectacularly , that it actuate frightened calls up and down the entire eastern seaside .
This same satellite have live , space - based global communications as we know it . The early test ’s fantastical loser was due mostly to the Echo 1 ’s wondrous design : It was basically an enormous , 30 - metre - all-inclusive balloon full of nitrogen . As it speedily inflated , 60 miles off the ground , the insistence first derivative between the bird ’s interior and the thin line of the upper atmosphere shredded the 0.01 millimetre - thin skin . The extremely reflective sherd sent flashes of lightness in all management . informant said it looked like fireworks .
NASA wanted Echo to be the first inactive satellite — basically a mammoth mirror that bounces signal from one point on the earth down toward another — ever assembled and launched . This was an important ambitiousness for a Carry Amelia Moore Nation that was almost uniformly terrified of lagging behind the Soviets in the outer space race . Both the USSR and the US had launched active satellites — which broadcast pre - recorded messages from the concluding frontier — but Echo was to be the first of its sort , contain the potential to massively expand our power to communicate with one another .
When the Echo 1 at last reached orbit on August 12 , 1960 , it stayed there for eight year , and was visible to the naked eye over the intact planet . It ’s considered to have been seen by more people than any other manmade object in blank space . Ever . For NASA , it was an priceless source of experimental data point , and was used to air television , phone , and radio transmissions across the US and around the world . For the US government , it was also maintain as an effectual employment of propaganda , a symbol of glowing American influence above the world .
But Echo 1 ’s political meaning during the space race is jubilantly leave . What ’s still with us is its bequest , having evidence that planet communications works . dry land ’s orbit is now herd with orbiter beaming selective information around , and , more often do not , they do not explode in shimmering , terrifying rain shower of light . But they ’re put to work on the Echo 1 ’s same premiss — and for that , we wish it a happy 50th birthday .
Skip to the middle of the video below for a look at the Echo 1 and its successful launch — between a generally wonderful presentation of midcentury quad porn — when NASA was exciting enough to demand its own spectacular soundtrack .
UPDATE : We received an electronic mail this morn from Tiffany Nason , granddaughter of William J O’Sullivan , who oversaw the Echo task . We asked her to share her remembering on Echo , her grandfather , and the satellite ’s bequest :
As a kid , everyone speak about him and what he did . My nanna would regale us with stories of tea time with the first Lady when my grandad had meetings with presidents . We have the National Geographic magazine from the front page cover of Echo , video recording footage from NASA ’s project interviewing him and his team , there ’s all sorts of letters signed by the president hang on the wall , the video footage of him on television set shows , even a memorial stamp . We ’re all very gallant to be part of his category and honor his work . His name does n’t appear a lot in connection to the satellite anymore — I’ve heard tall narrative of having to pay encyclopedias for the mention , but the most sensical one is that NASA ( NACA then ) was really about have it be all about them and not the mortal . That changed slightly in the twenty-four hour period of Buzz Aldrin and the great distance wedge but even today it ’s about NASA and not the scientists . From what I can put together via family oral chronicle and archived memorabilia , my grandfather in spades got his 15 minutes of fame but it seems that these days the world has really leave about Echo and it ’s significant share to global telecommunications ( and shiny birthday balloon . )
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