Dec 22 1975
From The Space Library
A new domestic communications-satellite partnership named Satellite Business Systems filed applications with the Federal Communications Commission seeking authorization to establish an all-digital system to serve large industrial, government, and other users beginning in 1979. The new partnership had been formed by subsidiaries of Aetna Life & Casualty, Comsat General, and IBM, each of which intended to own one-third. The proposed system, using higher frequencies at 12 and 14 gigahertz and advanced technology, would permit customers in geographically dispersed locations to combine voice, data, and image communications into a single integrated private line network; small automated ground stations would be located at customers premises and connected where possible to existing terminals to minimize terrestrial communications costs. The system would use two satellites in geostationary orbit at about 36 000 km altitude, one serving as a backup, to provide coverage of the 48 contiguous states. (Comsat Release 75-63)
The Soviet Union launched Prognoz 4, a 905-kg automatic station to study corpuscular and electromagnetic emissions of the sun, flows of solar plasma, and near-earth magnetic fields, to determine solar influence on the earth's magnetosphere. The satellite's orbit would have a 40 836-km apogee, 451-km perigee, 12 hr 16 min period, and 62.8° inclination. (Tass, in FBIS No 247, 22 Dec 75)
The Soviet Union launched a communications satellite called Raduga (Rainbow) into a stationary circular orbit at 35 000 km, with a 23 hr 54 min period and a 0.3° inclination. The satellite had been instrumented to provide continuous round-the-clock telephone and telegraph radio communications with simultaneous transmission of color and black-and-white central TV programs to the network of Orbita stations. (Tass, on FBIS No. 248, 23 Dec 75)
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