and passive satellite experiments There are two major classes of communications satellites, passive and active. Passive satellites only reflect the signal coming from the source, toward the direction of the receiver. With passive satellites, the reflected signal is not amplified at the satellite, and only a very small amount of the transmitted energy actually reaches the receiver. Since the satellite is so far above Earth, the radio signal is attenuated due to free-space path loss, so the signal received on Earth is very, very weak. Active satellites, on the other hand, amplify the received signal before retransmitting it to the receiver on the ground. Passive satellites were the first communications satellites, but are little used now. Work that was begun in the field of electrical intelligence gathering at the United States Naval Research Laboratory in 1951 led to a project named Communication Moon Relay. Military planners had long shown considerable interest in secure and reliable communications lines as a tactical necessity, and the ultimate goal of this project was the creation of the longest communications circuit in human history, with the moon, Earth's natural satellite, acting as a passive relay. After achieving the first transoceanic communication between Washington, D.C., and Hawaii on 23 January 1956, this system was publicly inaugurated and put into formal production in January 1960. The first satellite purpose-built to actively relay communications was Project SCORE, led by Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and launched on 18 December 1958, which used a tape recorder to carry a stored voice message, as well as to receive, store, and retransmit messages. It was used to send a Christmas greeting to the world from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The satellite also executed several realtime transmissions before the non-rechargeable batteries failed on 30 December 1958 after eight hours of actual operation. The direct successor to SCORE was another ARPA-led project called Courier. Courier 1B was launched on 4 October 1960 to explore whether it would be possible to establish a global military communications network by using "delayed repeater" satellites, which receive and store information until commanded to rebroadcast them. After 17 days, a command system failure ended communications from the satellite. NASA's satellite applications program launched the first artificial satellite used for passive relay communications in Echo 1 on 12 August 1960. Echo 1 was an aluminized balloon satellite acting as a passive reflector of microwave signals. Communication signals were