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of a basketball court up there could be seen visible to the unaided eye. For its communications role, ECHO needed no receiver, no amplifier, no repeater. Its entire assignment could be stated in three words, reflect radio waves. Before board amplifiers and repeaters became the standard engineers, you know, asked, you know, what would happen if we just used this radio mirror ball in space? It basically, the concept went something like this. A ground station could aim a microwave signal at the mirror. The signal would strike the satellite's metallic surface and scatter it back to Earth. Where a suitably positioned receiving station could capture some portion of it. ECHO 1 did not receive a message as modern communication satellites do. It decoded nothing, it amplified nothing, it simply reflected radio energy.