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This is a sample of skin of the same type used on the ECHO 1 satellite, the world's first communication satellite. The passive communications satellite (signals were bounced off it rather than transmitted to and from like later satellites) was a 100-foot diameter inflated Mylar sphere whose skin is roughly a few-thousandths of an inch thick. A test of an ECHO 1 satellite can be seen at right in a photo from 1965. ECHO 1 and 1A, the first of just three ECHO satellites ever launched, were sent into space in 1960; the first failed to reach orbit due to a launch vehicle failure, but the second was highly successful. ECHO 2 launched in 1964. |
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