Mar 10 1968
From The Space Library
NASA's Echo I (launched Aug. 12, 1960) , world's first passive reflector comsat, was being driven closer to denser regions of earth's atmosphere and would reenter before summer 1968. The 100-ft globe of aluminum-coated mylar plastic had been battered by space dust and meteoroids, its skin wrinkled, and its benzoic acid and anthraquinone inflating gas lost. Echo Ps nearly circular orbit 800 mi above earth had become egg-shaped in more than 71/2 yr of operation. It had probably been seen by more people than any other man-made object in space. (NASA Release 68-44; P EB, 2/13/68; UPI, NYT, 2/14/68, 8)
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