This vintage recording recently found in the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory audio archives comes from NASA's first successful communications satellite, Project Echo. The project involved bouncing radio signals off a 10-story-high, aluminum-coated balloon orbiting the Earth in 1960. This form of “passive” satellite communication – which they dubbed a “satelloon” -- was an idea conceived by an engineer from NASA’s Langley Research Center and a project managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL sent and received signals through two of its 85-foot-diameter antennas at the West Coast Goldstone tracking station in the Mojave Desert. Recording by NASA. Part of the Space is the Place project - for more information, see http://www.citiesandmemory.com/space
