Syncom 40th Anniversary
Syncom Grounded in Sound Theory
The first in a series of articles celebrating the 40th anniversary of the launch of Syncom 2, the world's first geosynchronous satellite.
It was a small spacecraft that made a big impact, setting the stage for revolutionary advances in communications and intelligence capabilities that account for a significant share of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems' business. Syncom 2, the world's first geosynchronous satellite, developed and built by Hughes Aircraft Company (whose satellite manufacturing unit later became Boeing Satellite Systems), was launched 40 years ago, in July 1963.
Considering the novelty of the idea, it's perhaps fitting that a science fiction writer played a prominent role in the Syncom story. In 1945, Arthur C. Clarke predicted that three satellites, each hovering in stationary orbit more than 22,000 miles above the Earth, in the plane of the equator, could relay radio and television signals all over the world.
Clarke elaborated on Austrian engineer Hermann Noordung's theory, formulated in 1929, that an object 22,238 miles over the equator and traveling 6,878 miles per hour would match, or synchronize with, the Earth's daily rotation, keeping the object fixed over one spot on the Earth's surface.
By 1959, two years after the Soviet Union's Sputnik launched the space age, Harold Rosen, a Hughes scientist and later Clarke's friend, believed the writer's idea could be put into practice. Rosen teamed with Hughes colleagues Donald Williams and Thomas Hudspeth in proposing a synchronous satellite to NASA. After completing initial development with company funds, Hughes won a $4 million contract from NASA and the Department of Defense to build three synchronous satellites.
In some ways, simplicity was to be Syncom's chief virtue. Pre-Syncom communications satellites used low orbits, requiring huge swiveling ground antennas and expensive tracking computers to stay in contact with them during the brief time they raced overhead.
In contrast, a synchronous satellite could communicate directly and continuously with any ground station in its line of sight, using fixed antennas.
Rosen, Williams, and Hudspeth reasoned that a spinning satellite configuration was the easiest way to simplify attitude and velocity control and achieve the low weight necessary for the limited launch vehicle capacity then available. "Despite its simplicity, Syncom was still pretty complex," Hudspeth recalled years later. "There was no standard way of doing things."
Determine to prove that theirs was a feasible proposal, Rosen and Hudspeth demonstrated a flyable prototype's prowess at relaying TV signals at the 1961 Paris Air Show. They even showcased the prototype atop the Eiffel Tower. By 1963 the real thing, weighing all of 78 pounds, was ready to fly. On February 14, 1963, Syncom 1 was sent aloft from Cape Canaveral, Florida, but communication was lost shortly after launch. Syncom 2 was launched successfully in July, reaching synchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the Atlantic Ocean. It was followed in August 1964 by the successful launch of Syncom 3. The geosynchrounous satellite era was born.