In 1945, Arthur C. Clarke was an RAF electronics officer and member of the British Interplanetary Society. In an article he wrote for Wireless World magazine that year entitled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays", Clarke, who would go on to write "2001: A Space Odyssey" more than 30 years later, proposed that a series of satellites orbiting the earth could be used to distribute TV programs. The area of space 22,300 miles above the Earth where satellites now orbit the Earth is called the Clarke Belt in his honor. Among the birds beaming their signals back to Earth are satellite TV and satellite radio satellites. Half the distance closer – 6,000 to 12,000 miles over our heads – are where nearly 30 Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites roam.

Every school child knows that the first artificial man-made object launched into orbit was Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. But satellites were seen as largely military or industrial uses, not consumer. These military uses included space photography, navigation and tracking.

While working for MIT's division of fire control and army radar, Ivan Getting led the team that developed tracking radar that helped the Allies destroy 95 percent of the V-1 rockets Germany launched at England in the waning days of World War II. After the war, Getting was vice president of research at Raytheon. During the early heady days of Sputnik, Getting promoted the idea of using a system of satellites to track any moving object. But the idea was expensive and waited until the space program of the 1960s provided the necessary technology.

In 1972, the U.S. Department of Defense placed Dr. Bradford Parkinson in charge of a program based on Getting's Global Navigation Satellite Systems ideas. By 1978, Parkinson had a working system called NAVSTAR (NAVigation System with Timing And Ranging) in place, despite a great deal of skepticism that such a system would work. To discourage potential enemies of the U.S. from using the system for nefarious purposes, a Selective Availability (SA) degradation was imposed on the system, which limited exact fixes only to within 100 meters (around 300 feet) using commercially available GPS equipment. Five years later, President Reagan announced GPS technology would be made available for commercial civilian usage once the system was completed.

Handheld consumer GPS units were first available to consumers in 1989, and the GPS system was considered complete in 1994. In 2000, the SA restrictions were lifted by President Clinton, bringing accuracy to within 15 meters. In 2004, Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) technology improved overall accuracy to within three meters, enabling precise car navigation turn-by-turn directions and proved to be a boon for sales of both handheld and factory-installed and third-party car-based navigation systems. GPS also is used in a number of other portable products, specifically cell phones for use in wireless Web location-based applications that supply local information such as weather and movie listings to traveling users, as well as E911 that help emergency service workers locate users in distress.

Currently, there are two Global Navigation Satellite Systems: the U.S. GPS and the Russian GLObal NAvigation Satellite System (GLONASS). These systems constantly are being upgraded to meet higher standards of reliability. A more reliable system system called GALILEO being developed in Europe is scheduled to begin service in 2008.

But Clarke's vision was to use satellites to beam TV signals all over the world. The first satellite TV signal was relayed from Europe via Telstar to North America in 1962. The first U.S. TV satellite was Hughes' Syncom-3, launched in August 1964, a geostationary satellite that sent TV pictures from the Tokyo Summer Olympic games back to the U.S., the first TV transmission to cross the Pacific Ocean. But it would be 30 years before satellites would be used to beam TV signals direct to consumers homes.

Like it did with Sputnik, the Soviet Union also beat the West to direct-to-home geostationary satellite TV with Ekran, which beamed TV signals that could be received with a plain yagi antenna to homes in Siberia. England followed in 1989 with the Sky Television service. In early 1994, Hughes launched the U.S.-based DirecTV DBS (direct broadcast satellite) service, beaming digital TV signals back to roof-top satellite dishes measuring just 18-inches in diameter, about the size of a large pizza.

Within a year, thanks to the demonstrable benefits of its clear digital pictures, digital sound and a variety of programming, the new satellite systems sold more units in a shorter period of time than any other preceeding new technology. DirecTV was followed by Echostar's DISH Network satellite TV system in 1996. In 2000, elliptical high-definition TV dishes that received high-definition digital television (HDTV) signals from space went on sale. More than 20 percent of the U.S. now use one of these two services to receive television signals.

Satellite radio had a much shorter gestation period than either GPS or satellite TV. The seed for satellite radio was planted in 1992 when the FCC allocated spectrum in the so-called "S-band", 2320-2345 MHz, for Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service (SDARS), which it would split to accommodate two operators. Several companies immediately petitioned the FCC for the two SDARS licenses. The FCC decided to hold an auction between April and October 1997, when it announced that American Mobile Radio, now renamed XM, and CD Radio, which would change its name to Sirius in 1999, had submitted the winning SDARS bids.

Both XM and Sirius launched their satellites in 2000, XM's two Hughes-made geostationary satellites, nicknamed "Rock" and "Roll," for use in the 2320-2345 MHz bandwidth, and Sirius’ three geosynchronous birds to transmit in the 2320-2332.5 MHz bandwidth. On September 25, 2001, XM went live and, two months later, was available nationally. Sirius inaugurated its service in four states the following February, then nationwide on July 1, 2002. Both companies, which combined now have around 10 million subscribers, have partnered with a variety of hardware makers to manufacture and sell home, car and portable satellite radio receiving products.

The XM-owned WorldSpace, inaugurated in 1999, supplies satellite radio services throughout most of the rest of the world.