Word: orbiteer
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...rocket itself was a familiar bird; duplicates had blasted into space many times before. But the payload that the reliable Delta tossed into orbit last week was an astonishing piece of equipment. Built by private industry, fired aloft by the U.S. Government, the Bell Telephone Laboratories' little Telstar satellite (3-ft. diameter) opened a bright new era of long-distance communication. Very-high-frequency radio and TV stations, which are limited to line-of-sight range, suddenly saw their future reach out beyond the horizon, around the curve of the earth...
From the Sky. Although it was only 15 hours in orbit before it relayed a phone call between A. T. & T. Board Chairman Frederick R. Kappel in Maine and Vice President Lyndon Johnson in Washington, and although it has already bounced TV programs between the U.S. and Europe, Telstar is only an experimental communications satellite. A large part of its equipment is devoted to studying radiation, micrometeorites, and other potentially troublesome features of space. It was placed deliberately on an elliptical orbit (apogee 3,502 miles, perigee 593 miles) so that it could report from many different altitudes...
Sixth Payoff. Soon after Telstar was launched, NASA's global tracking network reported it on a perfect orbit. At Andover, anxious scientists heard with relief that its telemetering system was working precisely as planned, reporting no trouble at all. But during its first five 158-min. orbits, Telstar did not come within practical line-of-sight distance of the big ear in Maine. The sixth orbit was the payoff. It was 7 p.m. in Maine when the satellite raced toward the U.S. Calculations showed that it would pass close enough to Maine to hear a command...
...many more satellites; some signals would pass through two or more relays before reaching their destinations. The higher the satellites circle, the fewer of them would be needed. If a communications satellite were placed 22,300 miles above the earth, it would take exactly one day to complete each orbit. Thus it would keep pace with the earth's rotation and stay above the same spot on the map. Advocates of such "synchronous" communications satellites point out that three of them would be enough to cover most of the earth...
After two successful three-orbit flights National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists decided that a six-orbit spin, probably in September, would be "well within the capability of the capsule" and of the man who flies it. Tagged for the job: Navy Commander Walter M. Schirra Jr., 39, whose parents were both pilots. Outgoing, witty and completely self-possessed, Schirra (rhymes with hurrah) is married to an admiral's step daughter, has two children. Because of the flight's length, he will be brought down in the Pacific off Midway, not in the Atlantic...