Amateur radio: OSCAR (and friends): Useful yet frugal: Since 1961, amateur radio operators have been launching satellites for communications, educational, and humanitarian applications

It happened one night in Little Rock, Ark. The huge animated neon sign of the Holiday Inn Hotel blinked and then went dark. A small group of people huddled in the parking lot. One person, a college student, pointed a compact VHF Yagi antenna skyward as the others watched. Shades of Close Encounters! “Where's the spacecraft?” someone asked.