Marisat and Marecs: Pioneering Commercial Mobile Satellite Services

This chapter examines the pioneering MARISAT and Maritime European Communications Satellites (MARECS) satellite systems. Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) Domestic and Aeronautical System Project Office (DASPO) is generally credited with having matched the needs with the available technology in mobile satellite communications and in so doing created the first commercial mobile satellite communications venture. The novel, and perhaps the most significant, feature of GAPSAT or MARISAT, however, was not the fact that it was one of the first major leases of satellite capacity to the US military. It was that the satellites were designed to operate with mobile terminals at both the L‐band and UHF frequencies. The MARECS were the second commercial mobile satellite communications system to be deployed, and the first entirely nonmilitary mobile communications satellites. Together, MARISAT and MARECS represent important beginnings in the development of the commercial mobile satellite industry.