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File:Relay 1 antenna USA.jpg

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English: Huge horn antenna at the AT&T Andover satellite ground station at Andover, Maine, USA, used to communicate with the first direct relay communications satellite, Telstar. Also used with the Relay 1 satellite. Built in 1961, it provided the first experimental satellite telephone and television service between North America and Europe.
The antenna was 94 x 177 ft. (29 x 59 meters) , and weighed 340 tons. To protect it from bad weather, it was enclosed inside a Dacron radome 160 feet (49 m) high, 210 feet (64 m) wide which weighed 30 tons. It was dismantled in the 1990s.

This type of antenna is called a Hogg or horn-reflector antenna, invented by Albert Beck and Harald Friis in 1941 and further developed by David C. Hogg at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1961. It consists of a flaring metal horn with a metal reflector mounted in the mouth at a 45° angle to the axis. The radio waves come from the satellite at a 90° angle to the horn and are reflected down the horn to the small building on the left, where they are received and amplified. The reflector is a segment of a parabolic reflector, so the antenna is equivalent to a parabolic dish fed off-axis. The advantage of this design over a standard parabolic dish is that it has very small sidelobes; that is, the horn shields the antenna from radiation coming from angles outside the main beam, such as ground noise, reducing the noise temperature of the antenna. Early satellites had weaker transmitters than modern satellites and required large antennas like this to communicate with them. Telstar was not in a geosynchronous orbit and passed overhead quickly in about 20 minutes, so the huge antenna had to be precisely steerable to track it across the sky as it passed. The antenna is mounted on a huge turntable in an altazmuth mount.

Polski: Ogromna antena tubowa, 28,6 m x 59 m, w ośrodku firmy AT&T w Andover (stan Maine), używana do łączności z satelitą Relay 1
Source NASA
Author Unknown authorUnknown author

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Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
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Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current23:04, 8 March 2008Thumbnail for version as of 23:04, 8 March 20081,258 × 752 (745 KB)Mbdortmund
09:49, 10 July 2007Thumbnail for version as of 09:49, 10 July 20071,258 × 847 (860 KB)NH2501{{en|Huge horn antenna, 94 x 177 ft., in AT&T facility at Andover (Maine) used to communication with Relay 1 satellite}} {{en|Ogromna antena tubowa, 28,6 m x 59 m, w ośrodku firmy AT&T w Andover (stan Maine), używana do łączności z satelitą Relay 1}

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