Background
Communication Moon Relay grew out of many ideas and concepts in radio espionage. Some impetus for the project was provided by post-World War II efforts to develop methods of tracking radio signals, particularly those originating in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Other sources included earlier proposals to use the Moon as a radio wave reflector, which date back to 1928. The Project Diana program of the U.S. Army Signal Corps detected radar waves bounced off the Moon in 1946 and attracted the attention of Donald Menzel. Menzell was a staff member of the Harvard College Observatory and a former United States Navy Reserve commander, who proposed that the Navy undertake a program to use the Moon as a secure communications satellite.
Prior to the Moon Relay project, long distance wireless transmission required that radio waves be refracted by the Earth's ionosphere, which was sometimes disrupted by solar flares and geomagnetic storms. The Moon, and, later, artificial satellites, provided a target from which to reflect radio waves, enabling them to be promulgated even when the ionosphere was disturbed.
The developments in Moon circuit communications eventually came to the attention of James Trexler, a radio engineer at the Naval Research Laboratory. His interest was piqued by a paper published by researchers at an ITT laboratory. Trexler developed plans for a system designed to intercept Soviet radar signals by detecting the transmissions that bounced off the Moon. This program, codenamed "Joe," began making regular observations in August 1949. Within a year, "Joe" was made an official Navy intelligence program, the Passive Moon Relay (PAMOR).
In September 1950, a new parabolic antenna for the PAMOR project was completed at Stump Neck, Maryland. The first tests of this antenna were impressive; the returning signal was of much higher fidelity than expected. This presented the possibility of using a Moon circuit as a communications circuit. Unfortunately for PAMOR, collecting Soviet radar signals would require a larger antenna. Efforts began to have such an antenna constructed at Sugar Grove, West Virginia.
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