Jan 17 1976
From The Space Library
17-29 January. The Communications Technology Satellite designed by U.S. and Canadian technicians-world's most powerful comsat-was launched from Complex 17, Eastern Test Range, at 6:27:54 pm EST (23:28 GMT) on a Delta 2914 vehicle, delayed from its scheduled date of 13 Jan. The 346-kg space craft cost $60 million in Canadian funds and $22 million in U.S. funds. The design departure used on CTS was the system for providing solar power to the transmitter: a pair of accordion pleated solar arrays to be extended by thin steel booms to a wingspan of 7.5 m each, that could provide I kw of power over Cts's 2-yr lifetime. A 3-axis stabilization system would keep the panels pointed toward the sun for power while the satellite antennas aimed accurately at the center of target transmission areas, about a time zone wide. The large-diameter low-profile spacecraft would be turned over to the Canadian Department of Communications for operation after the spacecraft reached synchronous orbit. Apogee-motor firing at 3:41 pm EST 20 Jan. put Cts into a synchronous orbit at 35 888 km altitude, with final station at 116°W over the equator reached 29 Jan.
Cts was the result of a 5-yr international program of cooperation between NASA and CDC to pioneer in new methods of providing communications services by transmitting high-quality color TV and other data to small user-operated ground stations in remote areas. It carried a high efficiency 200-w traveling-wave tube amplifier developed at LeRC that would operate at power levels 10 to 20 times higher than those of previous satellites, permitting the use of smaller and less expensive ground equipment, and in a new frequency band providing microwave signals in the 12-ghz region. In 1971, the World Administrative Radio Conference had begun assigning frequencies between 11 and 14 ghz and 18 and 30 ghz to signal-relay and broadcast satellites of the future, in hopes of averting a communications jam in orbit in the 1980s. The satellites could provide any country with a means of transmitting its own TV programs and setting up medical and educational consulting services in sparsely settled regions by using small, inexpensive-even portable ground stations. (NASA Release 76-9, 75-316; MOR E-610-76-01 [prelaunch] 22 Dec 75,[postlaunch] 28 Jan 76, [postlaunch #2] 13 Feb 76; ESA news releases 16 Jan 76, 6 Feb 76; W Star, 18 Jan 76, A-2, 21 Jan 76, A-11; NYT, 30 Jan 76, C 11)
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