TIME
August 9, 1963 12:00 AM GMT-4
Getting the communication satellite Syncom II smoothly into its 22,500-mile, 24-hour orbit (TIME, Aug. 2) was only the beginning of the job. There was still a series of delicate maneuvers to be performed before the spacecraft could do its appointed work. Accurate guidance was needed to match Syncom’s orbit to the earth’s rotation; it was moving a little too fast, drifting ahead of the earth by about 7.5 degrees of longitude per day. Out on the Navy control ship Kingsport in Lagos harbor, Nigeria, engineers sent radio signals that fired jets of hydrogen peroxide to slow Syncom down. Obediently the satellite changed the direction of its drift, began to move toward its proper position above Brazil.
Next job was to spin the satellite so that its radio antenna would point at the earth. Other peroxide jets were fired and the antenna swung toward its target. The movement also increased the satellite’s westward drift, and at midweek Syncom II was over Africa, oscillating back and forth across the equator in a lazy figure eight.
It was not yet on station, but during a northward swing it came just near enough for receivers in New Jersey to catch a radio glimpse of it just above the horizon. The scientists listened intently, and were rewarded for a few minutes by voices that had climbed up to Syncom II from Kingsport and had been relayed down to New Jersey. The messages stopped when Syncom II swung south again and sank below the horizon.
When Syncom reaches Brazil, its drift will be stopped by further jets of peroxide, and its antenna may be pointed with still greater accuracy at the earth. Then it will arc high above the New Jersey horizon, ready to relay messages to and from more than one-third of the earth.
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