摘要：When Arthur Clark and John Pierce proposed geosynchronous and low-Earth-orbiting (GEO and LEO) communications satellites, respectively, they did not envision that the environment in which their concepts would fly would be anything but benign. Discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in 1958 fundamentally altered understanding of Earth's near-space environment and its impacts on technologies. Indeed, the first commercial telecommunications satellite, Telstar 1, in LEO, failed some 6 months after launch (10 July 1962) due to trapped radiation that had been enhanced from the Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test on the day prior to launch.
