HOW RADIO AMATEURS LAUNCHED WORLD'S FIRST PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE

Amateur Radio innovation has often preceded commercial technology in many applications. Here is another example of today's mass media paying tribute to that fact told through the legacy of one of many hams' involvement in what is still an ongoing venture for us.

Hope you enjoy reading the story.

73, John, WØPV

HOW AMATEUR RADIO FANATICS LAUNCHED THE WORLD'S FIRST PRIVATE COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE

Before the CubeSat, there was OSCAR 1.

by JON KELVEY 12.12.2021



THERE ARE MORE than 1,600 CubeSats in orbit around the Earth, with more than 1,000 of those launching in 2020 alone. But while these inexpensive small satellites have made space more accessible to university classes, small companies, and more, their forerunners stretch back to the beginning of the
Space Age.

Meet OSCAR 1 — the first small private satellite in space.

Groups like the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), an international confederation of ham radio operators, have been flying small private satellites for years, well before the first CubeSats flew in 2003.

“CubeSats actually started with AMSAT, but they didn’t get a lot of credit for it, unfortunately,” former Lockheed satellite technician and ham radio enthusiast Lance Ginner K6GSJ tells Inverse.

Ginner would know. He was there at the very beginning, 60 years ago, for the design and launch of OSCAR 1, which was history-making in a few ways. It was:

- The first smallsat
- The first private, non-government spacecraft
- The first spacecraft to hitch a ride on another launch​

It took a while, entire professional lifetimes, but virtually everything that enabled the commercial small satellite industry of the 2020s was there in an embryonic form on a Vandenberg Air Force Base launch pad on December 12, 1961.

OSCAR 1 and AMSAT, “from my perspective,” Ginner says, “absolutely invented the genre.”



WHAT IS HAM RADIO?

Ham radio, often called amateur radio, derived its name from a derisive term for clumsy telegram operators in the 19th century referred to as “ham-fisted.” The name reflects that the technicians are, well, amateurs, often experimenting with the form in a legally allowed way.

The operators broadcast at several wavelengths using off-the-shelf equipment. It’s a hobbyist space a few notches above citizen’s band radio in both scope and distance signals can travel. Amateur radio operators often talk to each other at the same frequency. It’s one of the first big tech subcultures of the 20th century — and one that was ready for the space revolution.

THE BEGINNING OF AMATEUR SPACE RADIO

An active ham radio operator in his teens, Ginner was 21 when he took a job as a technician at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California, in 1960.

“I didn’t know at the time, but I was extremely fortunate,” Ginner says, “because the space industry was just getting started.”

The Soviet Union had launched the first artificial satellite and spacecraft, Sputnik 1, just three years earlier, and the US had followed suit with Explorer 1 in 1958. The first crewed space flights would come in 1961.

Among many ham enthusiasts working in the space and electronics industry in what we now call Silicon Valley, the idea of getting in on the action was born. Hams at Lockheed introduced Ginner to the concept of attaching a small satellite to the Agena-A spacecraft Lockheed was building for the Air Force.

“That really intrigued me, and I was right in the test area where we tested the [Agena],” he says. “That’s when I got involved.”

That involvement included more than helping design and built what would become OSCAR 1. It was a plunge into the deep end of national security politics.

“Just getting a ride was all political,” Ginner says. “Just huge conversations that were beyond me at the time when I was 21-years-old.” The Hams wanted to attach a civilian-made spacecraft to a United States Air Force spacecraft flying a classified reconnaissance mission. It took some heavyweight people to make that happen, like Republican Senator Barry Goldwater and General Curtis LeMay, Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

“It was a big leap for the Air Force to let us hop onto their mission,” Ginner says, though he was hardly waiting around. “We started building the satellite before we really had permission.”

Ginner and his fellow ham enthusiasts dubbed their satellite the Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio, or OSCAR. The group of hams building it in their garages and spare time called themselves Project OSCAR.



OSCAR 1 fitted aboard its launch vehicle.

WHAT WAS OSCAR 1?

OSCAR 1 was a metal box, slightly curved, measuring 30 by 25 by 12 centimeters, and weighing just less than 10 pounds, a design born out of the raw necessity of hitching a ride where it could on an Air Force Agena spacecraft.

“As you see, in some of the pictures, it kind of fits in a little cubby hole near the engine,” Ginny says. “So the shape was determined by where we could put it.”

There was some discussion about whether to attempt to deploy OSCAR 1 or keep it attached to the Agena, Ginny says, but Project OSCAR ultimately wanted to have a free-flying spacecraft. “I think the Air Force probably liked that, too, because they didn’t want to have us still riding on their classified payload.”

Like Sputnik, OSCAR 1 would be a beacon, transmitting a repeating signal only. Sporting a 60 cm antenna for transmitting a simple message in Morse code, “Hi” on the 144.98 megahertz frequency using a two-meter wavelength, OSCAR 1 didn’t broadcast with much power. Solid-state electronics, specifically transistors, were just coming into their own as alternatives to much bulkier vacuum tubes, Ginner says, and “at that time, there weren’t any transistors that really put out any power at that frequency. We’re talking tens of milliwatts.”

Ultimately, the social network of hams with day jobs at Silicon Valley companies turned out to include hams at Fairchild Semiconductor International, which provide transistors the company was developing that weren’t yet on the market or even named.

LAUNCHING THE FIRST PRIVATE SMALL SATELLITE

When it came time to launch OSCAR 1, the Project OSCAR hams put together the 1961 equivalent of a live streaming event. “How do you get the word out around the world?” Ginner says. “We had a huge set up at Foothill College with [high-frequency radio] communications and networks. This is all before the internet, of course.”

It worked. OSCAR 1 successfully rode a Thor-DM21 Agena B to space on December 12, 1961, separated, and began transmitting to the delight of hams around the world. In the process, it beat Telstar 1, the first commercial spacecraft, to space by seven months.

“It was easy to receive. You could pick it up fairly easily,” Ginner says. “In those days, you wanted to catch every pass. So every hour and a half or so, you’re out in the ham shack, tracking this thing and counting the rate of the beeps.”

They learned a lot from those beeps, Ginner says, in part because their rate was synced to a temperature sensor. “Thermal control of satellites was very, very new,” he says, and they took their best shot, painting OSCAR 1 with metallic stripes but not quite nailing it. “The temperatures on OSCAR 1 were quite high, and we changed that design for OSCAR 2. OSCAR 2 lasted longer, and the temperatures were, you know, much more benign.”

OSCAR 1 ultimately transmitted for about three weeks, its batteries giving out by January 1, 1962 — “there were no solar panels back then,” Ginner notes — and it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere later that month.

OSCAR’S LEGACY

Project OSCAR would ultimately fly five similar satellites with gradually expanding capabilities to space. For instance, OSCAR 3 was a transponder that both sent and received ham signals. The project was eventually folded into the new AMSAT organization founded in 1969.

AMSAT took the concept and ran with it, launching more than 100 subsequent OSCAR satellites of various designs over the ensuing decades. The most recent sat launched in June, MIRSAT-OSCAR 112.

“AMSAT still is pretty big,” Ginner says. “They’re doing some really cutting edge engineering, which is as good or better than you can do out in the private sector.

OSCAR 1 may seem quaint in the era of mega-constellations such as SpaceX’s Starlink, but the original small satellites remain the forerunners of much of the commercial space industry today. And some of them are still around, like AMSAT OSCAR 7.

“What’s really neat is the ham community is big enough where they listen for old satellites, and occasionally they’ll come back on the air,” Ginner @K6GSJ says. AO 7, as he calls it, was launched in 1974 and ceased operating in 1981. “It looked like the battery shorted, or something happened there, and years later, apparently the short cleared, and so when it was in sunlight, it revived.”

Ginner’s memory of Project OSCAR revived as well. When preparing to speak with Inverse, he realized it would be the 60th anniversary of the OSCAR 1 launch on December 12.

“My grandson now is the same age I was when this all happened,” he says. “It’s been a good ride.”

 

Cool stuff! Much respect & 73 de KG5JAW.

 

Excellent. Thanks so much for posting.

 

Thanks for an enjoyable post to READ. First one I have seen in a long while that wasn't a grimacing cartoon like character pointing to a video. I was involved in those early years, contacting MIR etc. I remember vaguely setting out an experiment in the woods to signal an orbital team, but the purpose escapes me. 73s and Merry Christmas to all. Ken WA5KM

 

Nice!

Construction methods circa 1961 can be seen on this short vid. Amazingly, or because of that ruggedness, it survived the beating of vibration after being carried so close to the Agena motor. I've read this prototype was literally dug out of ARRL storage only a few years ago to be put on display.

Video comments,

The operational backup of the historic OSCAR 1 satellite was on display and tranmitting CW at the ARRL stand at Dayton Hamfest 2011.

* First Amateur Satellite
* First Non-Military Satellite
* Launched from Athena-Thor Rocket, December 12th 1961
* Transmitted the word HI in morse code on 145.000 Mhz
* Power Output: 140mW, Battery POwer Only
* In orbit 22 days
* Heard by 578 hams in 28 countries
* Built for a total cost of $68

For a full story and technical details of OSCAR 1, visit http://www.arrl.org/news/oscar-i-and-...

Amateur Radio continues to develop a variety of satellites for truly 'off the planet' communication, and is closely associated with the International Space Station.

 

Thank-you for posting this historically great article.
Well written and truly informative.
This story certainly enables all readers to see how far we have come during the past 60 years.

 

I just worked WD9EWK "Patrick" on CAS-4B we sure have come a long way with Ham Radio in a short time. Got to run there is a pass on the ISS coming soon ! WOW 73 Phil..

 

Thank you, W0PV.

This is the best QRZ News related article I've read in years!

Fantastic!

 

Enjoyed the article as well. Thanks

 

Wow, nice piece of history!

 

Great article -- and I'm proud to have been the vice-president of the Satellite Amateur Radio Club at Vandenberg AFB, CA -- W6AB -- (now Vandenberg Space Force Base) back in 2001-2002 when I was stationed there as an Air Force Space Operations officer. The club was founded to support the launch of OSCAR-1, and we still have memorabilia in the club archives pertaining to the integration and launch of the satellite, to include the receipt for the spring used to deploy the satellite from its pictured "cubby" on the Thor Agena -- a small coil spring purchased for 10 cents ($0.10) from Sears-Roebuck in Santa Maria, CA, just north of Vandenberg. Try getting any mission-critical launch-qualified aerospace part for anywhere near that price today, even adjusted for inflation!

Also, if you get to the Udvar-Hazy campus of the National Air and Space Museum adjacent to Dulles International Airport, west of Washington DC in the Virginia suburbs, you can see the engineering full-scale mockup of OSCAR 1 in the space section of the museum floor. Here's a photo of the mockup in its cabinet.

73 de Sean , K4RSA, ex-KR4YO



Also in the cabinet is hardware from the West Ford project, a fascinating experiment in its own right attempting to create an artificial ionosphere via dispersal of a myriad of little copper dipoles into orbit. Talk about space debris...this one wasn't ready for prime time, with all sorts of problems getting the needles to disperse and generally making a mess. Wikipedia does a good job telling the story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford

 

Thankyou so much for this article.
It was very interesting to read.
It goes to prove that the older generation provided a great service to the hobby, Technological advances with components that technically weren't available was a real triumph.

All we hear nowadays is black box operators decrying the older generation.

The older generation technically made something from very little to advance science & amateur radio.

Earlier generations went one better, They actually built the components, Now that's what i call true amateur radio.

We as amateurs in the 21st century have it so easy with our ready made components, Arduino & plug & play kits, That we forget the true pioneers of the hobby... HI HI !

 

Enjoyed the reading. Glad it was posted for others to learn the beginning of "Ham in Space".