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Slice of History | September 1, 2015
Echo Station Control Room - April 1962
This April 1962 photo of Deep Space Station 12 (DSS-12) in Goldstone, California, was featured in Space Programs Summary 37-15, Volume 3–The Deep Space Instrumentation Facility. The 85-foot (26-meter) Echo antenna can be seen through the window of the control room, and three unidentified men are at the controls. The Echo site was named for its support of Project Echo, an experiment that transmitted voice communications coast to coast by bouncing signals off the surface of a passive balloon-type satellite. The antenna was moved six miles in June 1962 to the Venus site (DSS-13) and in 1979 it was extended to 34 meters in diameter.
The bimonthly Space Programs Summary, or SPS, is an excellent source of information about JPL missions and related research from February 1959 to October 1970. In 1970, the SPS series was replaced by the Technical Reports (32-1 to 32-1606) and other report series.
This post was written for “Historical Photo of the Month,” a blog by Julie Cooper of JPL’s Library and Archives Group.
TAGS: DEEP SPACE NETWORK, SPACE COMMUNICATION, TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY
