Orbiting Next-Gen Technology: The Women Behind Boeing's MexSat Satellite [Amperes: Current Affairs from Around the World]

In July 1963, Syncom, the world's first geosynchronous communications satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was a month before Martin Luther King, Jr.'s march on Washington, D.C. Twenty-six-year-old Russian Valentina Tereshkova had just become the first woman to travel in space. The satellite, looking something like a table lamp with its conical base and shimmering shade, was used in the first live two-way satellite call between heads of government when U.S. President John F. Kennedy telephoned Nigerian Prime Minister Abubakar Balewa.