It Spun into Synchronous Orbit and into History

The 1963 launch of Syncom, the world's first geosynchronous communications satellite, vanquished forces of time, cost, and geography to begin a communications revolution.

Today more than 180 active descendants circle the equator as Syncom once did. Few would have predicted such all-pervasive global consequences on July 26, 1963, when a Thor-Delta rocket blazed up from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to start Syncom on its journey into synchronous orbit and into history.

As early as 1929, Austrian engineer Hermann Noordung envisioned that an object placed over the equator at a height of 22,238 miles and a speed of 6,878 mph would match, or synchronize with, Earth's daily rotation. To a ground observer, an object in this synchronous orbit would seem to stand still, thus the term "geostationary." English scientist and writer Arthur C. Clarke took this theory a giant step further in 1945. He postulated that three spacecraft set equidistant in synchronous orbit could virtually blanket the planet with continuous radio and television coverage.