Communication Moon Relay

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.

The first proof of this concept was the Project Diana program of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1946, which detected radar waves bounced off the Moon.

Before artificial satellites, the Moon provided the only reliable celestial object from which to reflect radio waves to communicate between points on opposite sides of the Earth.

The developments in Moon circuit communications eventually came to the attention of James Trexler, a radio engineer at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Trexler developed plans for a system designed to intercept Soviet radar signals by detecting the transmissions that bounced off the Moon.

These were followed by the first transcontinental test of the system on November 20, 1955; the receiving site was the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, California.

A Navy contract for the project soon followed the successful tests, and, among other things, it was recommended that American submarines use Moon-reflection paths for communications to shore.