2-860-608 - Heritage Space/Heritage Images

T. Keith Glennan shows Lyndon Johnson aluminized mylar flim used to make the Echo I balloon, 1960. NASA Administrator Thomas Keith Glennan shows then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, Chairman of the Senate's Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, a sample of the aluminized Mylar film used to fabricate the 100-foot-diameter, automatically inflatable Echo I balloon. Project Echo was the U.S.'s first passive communications satellite that was launched into orbit on August 12, 1960 at 5:39 am EDT.