20/30Ghz Communications Test Satellite (1981)

[Graham1973]

A proposed Shuttle launched communications test satellite designed by General Electric.

The systems consisting of a 30/20 GHz communication satellite featuring a multiple fixed beam and scanning beam antenna, SS-TDMA, onboard processing and high power TWT's and IMPATT amplifiers, a trunking space-diversity Earth station, a customer premise system (CPS) portable Earth station and a Master Control Station. Hardware, software and personnel are included to build and launch one satellite and to carry on a two year experimentation and demonstration period of advanced Ka-band systems concepts and technology. Included are first level plans identifying all tasks, a schedule for system development and an assessment of critical technology and risk and a preliminary experiments plan.

The 30/20 GHz demonstration system SSUS-D/BSE

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810022876.pdf

 

[Byeman]

This became ACTS (Advanced Communications Technology Satellite)

 

[blackstar]

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1757/1

Footnotes of shuttle history: the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, January 17, 2011

Whenever I travel I try to visit the local used bookstores. While the whole world seems to be going digital and ebooks are supposedly the future, I still prefer books with protons and neutrons and a certain amount of mass. One of the things that concerns me about our digital future is that although you will be able to search much easier and faster for books, and be alerted about new titles of interest, accidental discoveries are probably going to diminish. Accidental discoveries are one of the reasons I like used bookstores. Everybody knows that in a bookstore you can find books that you did not know existed (and look through them before buying them). But used bookstores are great for finding books that you didn’t even know you were interested in, let alone existed.

That’s how I found The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite, a book with an admittedly non-flashy title. It was in a used bookstore on NASA Road 1 in Houston, only about half a mile from the main gate to the Johnson Space Center. The book was written by Richard T. Gedney, Ronald Schertler, and Frank Gargione, and published in 2000 by SciTech Publishing. Gedney was NASA’s project manager for the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (or ACTS) from 1980 to 1995, Gargione was the satellite’s program manager at Lockheed Martin, and Schertler was the experiment manager for ACTS at the NASA Lewis Research Center.