Dec 10 1976
From The Space Library
GSFC Director Dr. Robert S. Cooper presented a Group Achievement Award to the AIDSAT team for "the highly successful international demonstrations in which leaders of over twenty-five underdeveloped countries were shown the potential benefits to be derived from the application of satellite communications and remote earth sensing." The demonstrations had taken place over a 90-day relocation period during which the A is 6 was moving from its position over India to a new geosynchronous position over the western Pacific. The team-led by former GSFC engineer Paul McCeney, NASA Hq Office of Applications, as AIDSAT program manager; Al Whalen of GSFC, as project manager; and John Wilhelm of the Agency for Intl. Development, as program coordinator-undertook to produce 27 programs for broadcast to as many nations over the 3-mo period. Three technical teams carried portable terminal equipment to three clusters of nations: A, consisting of Thailand, Oman, Jordan, Sudan, Mali, Cameroon, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Jamaica; B, consisting of Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Libya, Upper Volta, Central African Republic, Bolivia, Surinam, and Costa Rica; and C, consisting of Pakistan, Kenya, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Argentina, Peru, and Haiti. Goddard engineers Dave Nace, John Chitwood, and Al Whalen were managers of the A, B, and C clusters respectively. The high-level government officials and businessmen in the participating countries who took part in the programs included eight presidents, three prime ministers, a king, and a sultan. Each country received virtually the same 2:5-hr program format, which began with a personal taped message from U.S. President Ford and presented films on remote sensing and on earth-orbiting communications and meteorological satellites, ending with an hour of two-way direct video communications between panelists in the U.S. and the host country. Millions of viewers in the host countries watched the programs by direct or delayed broadcast over national TV networks, some seeing the first colorcasts ever received in their country. The historic experiment in telecommunications technology transfer fulfilled a promise to make U.S. technology available to developing nations, given by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in May 1976 at the U.S. Conference on Trade and Development in Nairobi, Kenya. (Goddard News, Dec 76, 3-4)
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