Commercial U.S. satellites: A survey of communication satellites, their effect on domestic networks, and a look into the near and long-term future

Sixteen years ago, when communications via satellite began in earnest, talk of the earth's crowded electromagnetic spectrum was commonplace. Today the radio spectrum available to satellites is becoming similarly crowded, and so is desirable orbit space. It is a measure of the progress in satellite communications since the United States launched Syncom 2. It was the first successful geosynchronous satellite (Fig. 1).