Project Echo
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Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. Each of the two American spacecraft, launched in 1960 and 1964, were metalized balloon satellites acting as passive reflectors of microwave signals. Communication signals were transmitted from one location on Earth and bounced off the surface of the satellite to another Earth location.
Echo 1 sits fully inflated at a Navy hangar in Weeksville, North Carolina.
Echo 2
Holmdel Horn Antenna, constructed for Project Echo, and later used to discover the cosmic microwave background radiation.
T. Keith Glennan shows LBJ aluminized Mylar film used to make Echo I
OV1-8
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Orbiting Vehicle 1-8, launched 14 July 1966, was the seventh satellite launched in the OV1 series of the United States Air Force's Orbiting Vehicle program. OV1-8 was designed to test the passive communications utility of an aluminum grid sphere versus a balloon satellite.
OV1-8
Lt. Col. Clyde Northcott, Jr. , OV1 program manager