* Astronomy

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Echo I

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Launch failure of the Delta rocket carrying Echo 1 on May 13, 1960
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Echo 1A satellite

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Echo I

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The peak of the year's best meteor shower, the Perseids, on 12 August coincides with the 50th anniversary of the launch of Nasa's Echo 1, the pioneering communications satellite that was a conspicuous addition to our night sky during the 1960s. Consisting of a Mylar balloon 30.5 metres in diameter, Echo 1 orbited initially at a height near 1,600km and was used like a giant mirror to reflect radio signals between two points on the Earth's surface. As such it was a passive communications satellite; later active ones, such as Telstar that followed two years later, have receivers and transmitters to amplify and relay or broadcast the signals.
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Echo I bounces first voices, pictures beyond Earth's curve
NASA launched Echo I, the world's first passive communications satellite, from Cape Canaveral on Aug. 12, 1960.

"The principal use of the Echo satellite, is in radio communication experiments, in which reflection from the 100 foot sphere is used to relay signals beyond the curve of the earth" - Sky and Telescope.

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The Echo satellites were NASA's first passive communications satellite experiment. Each spacecraft was designed as a metallised balloon satellite acting as a passive reflector of microwave signals. Communication signals were bounced off of it from one point on Earth to another.

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