Systems and Services

After several science fiction papers and books, satellite telecommunications appeared with the paper titled “Extraterrestrial Relays” authored by Arthur Clarke and published on Wireless World in October 1945. In that paper, the orbital configuration of a satellite constellation utilizing a Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), an orbit located at 35800 km over the Earth surface coplanar with the equatorial plane, was proposed. In that configuration, three manned satellites, fixed with respect to a point on the Earth surface, were equally spaced in angle of 120° each and covered one third of the world. The second milestone was represented by the paper published in 1954, titled “Telecommunication Satellites”, authored by John Pierce where also Low Earth Orbit (LEO) were proposed using unmanned satellites. Latter, Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) have been considered.