Echo 1 Passive Communications Satellite

In 1960, NASA began Project Echo by launching two passive communications satellites into low Earth orbit.  Both satellites, products of the G.T. Schjeldahl plastics company of Minnesota, were folded into canisters, which opened once the satellites were about a thousand miles up.  The satellites inflated into Mylar balloons a hundred feet wide, and then reflected signals beamed from one spot on Earth to a target at another spot on the surface.  NASA decided to switch to active communications satellites, but Echo 1 stayed in orbit until May 1968 and Echo 2 until June 1969, and Bell Labs' Holmdel Horn Antenna in New Jersey gave Penzias and Wilson the equipment they needed to discover cosmic microwave background radiation.  This replica of Echo 1 is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.