Project West Ford (also known as Westford Needles and Project Needles) was a test carried out by

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and dev ...

on behalf of the

United States military The United States Armed Forces are the Military, military forces of the United States. U.S. United States Code, federal law names six armed forces: the United States Army, Army, United States Marine Corps, Marine Corps, United States Navy, Na ...

in 1961 and 1963 to create an artificial

ionosphere The ionosphere () is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth, from about to above sea level, a region that includes the thermosphere and parts of the mesosphere and exosphere. The ionosphere is ionized by solar radiation. It plays ...

above the Earth. This was done to solve a major weakness that had been identified in military communications.

History

At the height of the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

, all international communications were either sent through

submarine communications cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the seabed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables were laid beginning in the 1850s and car ...

s or bounced off the natural

. The United States military was concerned that the

Soviets The Soviet people () were the citizens and nationals of the Soviet Union. This demonym was presented in the ideology of the country as the "new historical unity of peoples of different nationalities" (). Nationality policy in the Soviet Union ...

might cut those cables, forcing the unpredictable ionosphere to be the only means of communication with overseas forces. To mitigate the potential threat, Walter E. Morrow started Project Needles at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1958. The goal of the project was to place a ring of 480,000,000 (Abstract)

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

dipole antenna In radio and telecommunications a dipole antenna or doublet is one of the two simplest and most widely used antenna types, types of antenna; the other is the monopole antenna, monopole. The dipole is any one of a class of antennas producin ...

s in orbit to facilitate global

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

communication. The dipoles collectively provided passive support to Project West Ford's parabolic dish (located at the Haystack Observatory in the town of Westford) to communicate with distant sites. The needles used in the experiment were long and 961or

963 Year 963 (Roman numerals, CMLXIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * March 15 – Emperor Romanos II dies at age 39, probably of poison administered by his wife, Emp ...

in diameter. The length was chosen because it was half the

wavelength In physics and mathematics, wavelength or spatial period of a wave or periodic function is the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. In other words, it is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same ''phase (waves ...

of the 8

GHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or Cycle per second, cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in ter ...

signal used in the study. The needles were placed in

medium Earth orbit A medium Earth orbit (MEO) is an geocentric orbit, Earth-centered orbit with an altitude above a low Earth orbit (LEO) and below a high Earth orbit (HEO) – between above sea level.

at an altitude of between at inclinations of 96 and 87 degrees. A first attempt was launched on 21 October 1961, during which the needles failed to disperse. The project was eventually successful with the 9 May 1963 launch, with radio transmissions carried by the manufactured ring. However, the technology was ultimately shelved, partially due to the development of the modern

communications satellite A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a Transponder (satellite communications), transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a Rad ...

and partially due to protests from other scientists. British radio astronomers, optical astronomers, and the

Royal Astronomical Society The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is a learned society and charitable organisation, charity that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, planetary science, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. Its ...

protested the experiment. The Soviet newspaper ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

'' also joined the protests under the headline "U.S.A. Dirties Space". The

International Academy of Astronautics The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) is a Paris-based non-government association for the field of astronautics. It was founded in Stockholm, Sweden) on August 16, 1960, by Dr. Theodore von Kármán. It was recognised by the United Nation ...

regards the experiment as the worst deliberate release of

space debris Space debris (also known as space junk, space pollution, space waste, space trash, space garbage, or cosmic debris) are defunct human-made objects in spaceprincipally in Earth orbitwhich no longer serve a useful function. These include dere ...

. At the time, the issue was raised in the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

where the then United States Ambassador to the United Nations

Adlai Stevenson Adlai Stevenson may refer to: * Adlai Stevenson I Adlai Ewing Stevenson (October 23, 1835 – June 14, 1914) was an American politician and diplomat who served as the 23rd vice president of the United States from 1893 to 1897 under President Gr ...

defended the project. Stevenson studied the published journal articles on Project West Ford. Using what he learned on the subject and citing the articles he had read, he successfully allayed the fears of most UN ambassadors from other countries. He and the articles explained that sunlight pressure would cause the dipoles to only remain in

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an ...

for a short period of approximately three years. The international protest ultimately resulted in a consultation provision included in the 1967

Outer Space Treaty The Outer Space Treaty, formally the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, is a Multilateralism, multilateral treaty that forms the bas ...

. Although the dispersed needles in the second experiment removed themselves from orbit within a few years, some of the dipoles that had not deployed correctly remained in clumps, contributing a small amount of the orbital debris tracked by NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office. Their numbers have been diminishing over time as they occasionally re-enter. , 44 clumps of needles larger than 10 cm were still known to be in orbit.

Launches

References

{{Reflist, 25em Space debris Satellites of the United States 1961 in the United States 1961 in science 1962 in the United States 1962 in science 1963 in the United States 1963 in science Military projects of the United States 1961 in spaceflight 1962 in spaceflight 1963 in spaceflight