A satellite the size of an oil drum quietly made it possible for two heads of state, an ocean apart, to speak in real time.

A Second Chance in Orbit

By the time five months passed after Syncom 1 stopped communicating when its motor ignited, engineers at Hughes Aircraft & NASA did not stop their work. It is a fact that their experimental satellite was small, as the drum-shaped cylinder measured seventy-six centimeters across. And because the device was small, people who doubted the project questioned if it could transmit signals that were easy to understand from thirty six thousand kilometers above Earth.

Launch and Orbit

On July 26, 1963, Syncom 2 launched from Cape Canaveral on a Thor-Delta rocket. As the satellite moved upward, its thrusters pushed it into a geosynchronous orbit approximately 35 888 kilometers above Earth. At this height the time it takes for the satellite to complete an orbit is twenty four hours, which is the same as the time the Earth takes to rotate. Due to the fact that the orbit had an inclination of thirty three degrees, Syncom 2 moved in a pattern that looks like the number eight in the sky instead of remaining over a single location.

For many years before this event, Arthur C. Clarke wrote that satellites at this specific altitude are able to connect different continents. With the launch of Syncom 2, this idea changed from a written theory into a physical reality.

A Historic Phone Call

In August 1963, President John F. Kennedy called Nigerian Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa from Washington, D.C., demonstrating the technology's success. The Prime Minister was on the USNS Kingsport in Lagos Harbor. When they spoke the two way conversation had no background noise. It is the first instance where heads of government used a satellite to talk to each other. There is now proof that space technology connects far locations on Earth without interruptions.