_It is hard enough to fix a new piece of scientific equipment when it
goes out of order in the laboratory. And when the equipment is sailing
around the earth a couple of thousand miles up in the sky a repair job
ought to be impossible. But during the last two months of 1962 we found
this not to be true at all. That was when the Telstar I satellite began
to misbehave and eventually would not obey the commands we sent it from
the ground. This presented us with a nice little problem: We had to find
out exactly what was wrong with the satellite and then—the really tough
job—devise a way to cure the trouble. We were able, finally, to do both
these things, after a combination of logical deduction, trial-and-error
experimentation, and laboratory testing—plus a certain amount of plain
good luck. Our “cure,” unfortunately, turned out to be only a temporary
one, for our patient had a relapse some weeks later. However, the story
of how we went about doing our never-before-attempted task should give
you an idea of the things you have to improvise in the laboratory when
an experiment doesn’t work out exactly as you had planned._