Satellite News Gathering

Communication Satellites

The demands of military missiles and communications drove and largely funded the initial development of communication satellites. First theorized by science fiction author and inventor Arthur C. Clarke in a 1945 article, the concept of orbiting satellites some 22,300 miles above Earth would allow three of them to communicate with the entire globe. At that altitude, they would appear to remain stationery (hence “geostationary” orbit) above the same spot. Clarke thought it might take 50 years to develop what he predicted—in fact it took less than 20.

The world's first low-orbit artificial satellite, Sputnik, was launched by the Soviet Union in October 1957. Its appearance sent shock waves through government and military circles in the United States and greatly increased federal funding to develop U.S. intercontinental missiles and orbiting satellites. Coverage of rocket launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida, became a regular beat in everyday print and television journalism—starting with the disastrous failed launch of the Vanguard satellite in December 1957, which was carried live on television. A year later the SCORE satellite carried a prerecorded message from President Eisenhower that was transmitted back to Earth. AT&T's Telstar satellite of mid-1962 allowed the first live television transmissions between Europe and the United States for the limited windows of time when the satellite was orbiting over the Atlantic. The Relay satellite later that year helped link the United States and Japan with voice communications. But all of these were low-altitude (a few hundred miles above Earth) satellites that could be used only intermittently for a few moments during each Earth orbit.

The breakthrough to Clark's geosynchronous orbit came with Syncom early in 1963, the first communications satellite to reach the 22,300-mile altitude. It and the two to follow quickly proved Clark's thesis by being useful 24 hours a day, unlike brief orbital “windows” for the earlier satellites. The United States created the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat) to further develop civilian satellite applications, which, in turn, led a year later to the formation of Intelsat to do the same globally. A steadily improved series of Intelsat satellites, starting with Early Bird in 1965, slowly expanded the global satellite communications system.

In the United States a growing number of domestic satellites (domsats) laid the groundwork for a wholly new way to interconnect broadcast stations and cable systems, doing away with expensive terrestrial links. Equipped with uplink and downlink antennas, networks and stations could now exchange or distribute programs in real [Page 1244]time (minus a tiny time lag for the signal to travel a total of 44,600 miles) at a fraction of the cost of traditional terrestrial coaxial cable or microwave links. Furthermore, signals could go either way and multiple channels could be accommodated. By the late 1980s, American broadcast and cable networks were all using satellite distribution, and television receive-only (TVRO) “dishes” had become ubiquitous at stations and cable systems.

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