New Puerto Rican facility joins Goldstone station in tracking network.
Initial Trajectory of the Army's first space probe, launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in December under the direction of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was determined by a new down-range tracking facility located at Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.
Designed and constructed by Collins under subcontract from the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the new facility tracked the probe until it fell below the horizon as viewed from Puerto Rico.
Tracking was made possible by means of a low powered beacon transmitter in the probe, which also emitted telemetry signals picked up by the sensitive receiving equipment at the Puerto Rico station. This station is capable of tracking space vehicles with very low power beacon transmitters out to more than 50,000 miles.
Dr. William H. Pickering, Director of JPL, paid tribute to the Puerto Rico crew for their “remarkable achievement in maintaining contact with the space probe even though the probe at one point was only 2.5 degrees above the horizon at Puerto Rico.”
Information received from the probe at Puerto Rico was processed and relayed to JPL at Pasadena and on to a larger tracking facility located at Goldstone Lake, Calif. The Goldstone facility, which utilizes an 85-foot dish antenna, tracked the space vehicle after it passed over the horizon at Puerto Rico.
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