Echoes of Echo half a century later

Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. Each of the two American spacecraft, launched in 1960 and 1964, was a metalized balloon satellite acting as a passive reflector of microwave signals. Communication signals were bounced off them from one point on Earth to another.

Following the failure of the launch vehicle carrying Echo 1, Echo 1A (commonly referred to as Echo 1) was successfully orbited in August of 1960, and was used to redirect transcontinental and intercontinental telephone, radio, and television signals. The success of Echo 1A proved that microwave transmission to and from satellites in space was understood and demonstrated the promise of communications satellites. The vehicle also provided data for the calculation of atmospheric density and solar pressure due to its large area-to-mass ratio. 

Echo 1A was visible to the unaided eye over most of the Earth (brighter than most stars) and was probably seen by more people than any other man-made object in space.

Echo 2 was a 41.1-meter-diameter (135 ft) balloon, which was the last balloon satellite launched by Project Echo. It used an improved inflation system to improve the balloon's smoothness and sphericity. It was launched fifty years ago, January 25, 1964, on a Thor Agena rocket. Echo 2, being larger than Echo 1A and also orbiting in a near polar orbit, was conspicuously visible to the unaided eye over all of the Earth. Echo 2 reentered Earth's atmosphere and burned up on June 7, 1969.

For months after the the first successful launch placed Echo 1A into orbit, the nightly news included a report on when and where to look for it in the night sky. We lived out in the country, and I remember many nights when the whole family would go out into the dark back yard and peer into the sky until one of us claimed to have located the satellite overhead. It was wondrous. 

I notice that Echo 2 fell back into the atmosphere and burned up only a matter of weeks before Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to become the first men to walk there. 

We had gone so far so fast.