July-August 1979 Volume 4 Number 4 COMSAT LABORATORIES TECHNICAL LIBRARY C..^r•,^MSAT ^/ COMSAT GENERAL CORPORA770NPPOAAT7ON SA TELL ITE ftt/hwys July- ku gust 1979 Volume 4 Number 4 CONTENTS Page Equipment Integration Group: Door to Ncw Opportunities I PATHWAYS is published eser\ other month by the Communications INTELSAT Board Elects Chairman/Vice Satellite Corporation's Office of Chairman: Adopts New Antenna Guidelines 7 Public Affairs: Robert It . Schssartz. Vice President; Dar:, I N. Crampton. Satellites Play Ke\ Role in Manager, Publications. Decade of Manned Space Flight 8 The editorial office of PATH- WAYS is located in the COMSAT Australia's Payne and COMSAT's Goldstein Building, 950 L ' Enfant Plaza, S.W., Elected to I lead INTEt.SAT Board 10 Washington , D.C. 20024. Phone: 202, 554-6104. Global Satellite Traffic Predicted to Double by 19213 10 EDITOR Labs' Torus Antenna Experimental Design I I John J . Peterson Projects New Image for Future Earth Stations 12 PHOTOGRAI'II1 CEA Picnic: 1979 M1lichael K. Glasbs Bill \legna Net" - rk Bits 14 STAFF CONTRIBI TORS Service Anniversaries 17 Anne A rmentrout 5,%illiam L . Brobs( AI)DFNI) 17 Edgar Bolen Daniel N . Crampton Allan Galfund Group (EIG) James T. M cKenna Cover. Creation of the new Equipment Integration Stephen A. Saft has consolidated diverse activities of C'O%ISAT into a single organization in order to better serve the telecommunications user. PI BLICATION ADVISORS Shown on the cover are scenes of FIG employees and some of the COMSAT equipment they work with or have designed and built : at center, television display monitors to be installed in the EIG-designed Joseph A . Charyk the innovative earth President and Launch Control Center ; and, at lower right , Chief Executive Officer station for seismic data transmission in McMinnville. Tennessee, Lucius 1) . Battle designed and built under subcontract to Sandia Laboratories. Senior Vice President. Corporate A ffairs Judith S. Finicki \Luiager. Med ia Relations and Information scniccs CONISAI GENERAL Hale Montgomer Director . Business Promotion A member of the International Association of Business Communicators. COMMUNICATIONS S.ATEI.LITE CORPORATION 1979 IN I F LJAT V ('PA .c1NTX]^_'k-- 1:4NO1/q. BRq^/L /NTFL^ AT Y F-7 C PLEUiftFUR•BOQgCJ, FRANCE SA9 aATr LUTE W__9_ //YTFLSq r Y 7-7--e CONTROL FAG\L.•TY C UP+3RA 0E CLAFt KB BU O. u % LANG FL/rG%NO. , z iz v INTE LSAT T CSM CONSOLE /iYTELSAT p' 7 7 C UPriRAOE ZAMENOOE CAME%z(^ON Awl .' '41441 f/4Wd// //YTEZ.SgT INTELSAT Y CSM CONSOLE Y T^s C UAC'RADE ,V; TANGUA. BRAZ\L C^!/TiY.4.4!!^ity /1USTRA/L /A /ylf' W F / 14 IN TE LSAT Y CSM CONSOLE pIGRAOE PLEUME U R - BODOU . FR ANGE 101V Z/V&P- E!s,41p^,. , . - ! INTELSAT Y CSM CO^1S^ASL ` UPGRADE BERCENAY EN-OTHE ,FRANGE SBS TTE C BEACON SS A\ \ON CASTLE ROCK . CO \k c Some idea o.1 the breadth of activities o/ the New Equip- the TT&C and CS.11 equipment to work with the new Ia'- ment Integration Group is provided through the display of' TELSAT V satellites and TT&C and Satellite Control Fa- signs at SIG's Monitoring & Control Engineering Division cility equipment for .SBS-these are just some of the jobs facility in Rockville, Maryland. New SPADE equipment , being designed , engineered, assembled and installed by FIG. Equipment Integration Group: door to new opportunities S YOU WALK OUT OF THE This new COMSAT enterprise, es- is under the direction of Dr. Terrence COMSAT Building on the tablished a little over a year ago, P. McGarty. Explaining how his divi- A south side of L'Enfant and fully operational since October, sion differs from other parts of the Plaza, you may notice on your left, is largely the result of a reorganiza- Corporation, Dr. McGarty com- through the plate glass windows, an tion within the COMSAT family. It mented: assortment of ducts, pipes , and wires. consolidates formerly disparate cor- "While COMSAT Laboratories pro- Before Christmas comes this year, porate efforts within one group. duces highly sophisticated system those fixtures and the machinery will While it retains many of COMSAT'S components and the new TeleSystems be in place, the new Launch Control established services, EIG has ex- subsidiary of COMSAT GF\I RAI manu- Center will be complete-designed panded to serve outside customers, factures communication products and built by COMSAT to accommodate utilizing the latest management in some volume, EIG designs, en- the expanding needs Of IN-1 VI -SA-1 V. techniques, such as computerized gineers, assembles, installs, and The LCC is only one of the impres- planning, budgeting, and controlling tests one-of-a-kind systems. When sive number of projects currently systems. Combining these systems EIG's work is done, the system is under construction through the ef- with modern business methods, EIG fully operational. The customer forts of one of COMSAT ' s newest will considerably diversify the revenue unlocks the door, and he's in additions, the Equipment Integra- base of the Corporation. business." tion Group (EIG). The Equipment Integration Group IContinued on ne.Lt page) JULY -AUGUST 1979 1 Such products are sometimes referred to as "turn-key" sophis- ticated equipment packages employed to meet a customer's unique needs. As an example, EIG is currently re- viewing prospects for a project on behalf' of the U.S. Geological Survey of the Department of' Interior. This project concerns the development of a global earthquake-monitoring sys- tem which would transmit data via Dr. Terrence P. McGarry is Divi- satellite. The technical and geo- sion Director of Equipment Integra- graphic dimensions of the task are tion. Dr. McGarty and two of the considerable: "This is a large-scale three division s reporting to him are network problem," Dr. McGarty based at L 'Enfant Plaza in Wash- notes. "involving end-to-end data ington, D.C. processing and computer communica- tions, large-storage capability for data, and small-terminal develop- ment." Two other extensive efforts, cur- rently in the fabrication and assem- bly phases, are under way in connec- tion with the INTFI.SAT v generation E!G designs, engineers, as- of satellites. EIG is involved in the design, engineering, assembly. and sembles, installs and tests one- installation of both a tracking, of-a-kind systems. When EIG's telemetry, and command system work is done, the system is fully (TT&C) as well as a communications operational. The customer un- system monitoring (CSM) system. locks the door, and he's in Both the TT&C and the CSM net- business. works are being engineered to con- tinuously deliver data to a central processing location. One result of the efforts will be the notification of system operators when problems are detected. Additional EIG efforts in support of' the INTELS.AT v program include: modifications in order to increase the data display capability of the Brian J. Williams is Director of INTEI.SAT Satellite Control Center the Control Systems Engineering Di- (located on the first floor of the vision. Plaza facility) and the replacement of the SP.ADF terminal at the Etam, West Virginia earth station. Further- more, as previously indicated, the Equipment Integration Group has responsihility for the development of' the C oNISAT Launch Control Cen- ter (LCC), at which the various INIFLSAI launches will he monitored in the future. It will receive data from the eight 'I'T&C stations from the moment an INTFI SAT \ is launched to the time it is on-line, when control of the satellite will he 2 PATHWAYS passed to the INTELS .AT Satellite Con- trol Center. As this article is published, even more projects will he underway. How will they he handled within the EIG organization ? The Equip- ment Integration Group encom- passes three divisions within COM- SAT: Equipment Design, headed by Walter J . Gribbin: Control Systems Engineering, headed by Brian J. Williams , and Monitor and Control Engineering , headed by Richard S. Walter J. Gribbin is Director of Cooperman. the Equipment Design Division. Determining system feasibility (both technical and non -technical aspects ). blocking out network designs. and conducting trade-off studies for specialized applications of satellite communications is the responsibility of Walter J. Gribbin and his staff, who make up Equip- ment Design . Grihbin's division has already completed several studies of data collection networks for a varict^ of U.S. Government agencies It is clear that the Equipment including the Department of Defense, Integration Group offers COM- the Department of Energy, and the SAT a promising future through PHOTOS BY BILL MEGNA AND MIKE GLASSY State Department. The determination of system opening up new opportunities feasibility and the like is only the and expanding our business in first step for EIG. Secondly. the the communications satellite necessary equipment ( hardware) and related fields. for the project needs to be engi- neered . The type of equipment needed , performance requirements. and system specifications must he determined . This is the job of "Ben" Williams and his staff of 19 in Con- trol Systems Engineering (CSE). Currently Mr. Williams' division is assembling the I.CC, modifying the Richard S. Cooperman is Director INTE.LSAT Satellite Control Center, of the Monitoring & Control Engi- and, as well, holding overall proj- neering (MCE) Division. MCE is ect responsibility for the INTEt.SAT N' located at 5 Choke Cherry Road in TT&C equipment . It is Mr. Williams' Rockville , Maryland. division which also handled the mod- ification of the SPADE equipment at the Etam earth station. Realization of "turn-key" sys- tems is performed within the Mon- itor & Control Engineering Group (MCE).