ACTS-a communications system for the future

The paper describes the new technologies in the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS), and their relevance to today's burgeoning field of digital communications, with applications ranging from voice telephony to gigahertz channels for supercomputer interconnections. The ACTS satellite was developed and built by Martin Marietta under contract to the NASA Lewis Research Center and launched on the Space Shuttle in September 1993. Its purpose is to maintain US leadership in satellite communications. ACTS provides an on-orbit digital communications laboratory available, free of charge, to US industry, academia and government agencies in order to conduct experiments in digital communications to help in defining future systems. The paper also discusses the types of experiments, the agencies conducting them, and the equipment that has been developed to conduct them.<>