Andrew M. Werth, 74, a satellite technology developer and a key figure in the industry for decades, died Jan. 28 at Sibley Memorial Hospital’s Grand Oaks Assisted Living Center.
Werth was former president of Hughes Network Systems International, where he helped build and sell satellite systems to 17 countries for a variety of uses, including telecommunications and weather forecasting. Hughes won a major contract in 1998 with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which monitors the nuclear activities of the world’s powers.
Werth was one of the earliest employees of Washington-based Comsat and was responsible for the tracking, telemetry and command systems of the world’s first commercial satellite, Early Bird, launched in 1965.
Throughout his career, Werth managed to find time to bicycle, sometimes several thousand miles a year. He was a nationally ranked racer in his youth and in his senior years, when he resumed serious bicycling, winning the USA Cycling Masters Track National Championship in 2000, 2003, and 2004. He became obsessed with bicycling as a teenager. He won a stack of $100 bills in a race he attended in Canada without his mother’s knowledge, which paid for a semester at Columbia University, where he graduated and later earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
Werth’ career began at ITT in New Jersey, where he was assigned to research digital satellite communications just as the Russians launched Sputnik. By 1964, he left ITT for Comsat, becoming its 35th employee. He worked with Hughes, which had the contract for Early Bird, and he later became responsible for launch operations from the ATT Telstar Earth Station at Andover, Maine. After that first commercial satellite was in operation, Werth worked on Intelsat II, a satellite for NASA’s manned space projects, and Intelsat III. He transferred to Comsat Laboratories in 1967 and developed a series of high-performance satellite modems. He left Comsat in 1972 to co-found Digital Communications, a Montgomery County-based firm that built sophisticated digital communications systems. In a series of acquisitions, the company became part of Hughes Network Systems in 1987. By the time he was asked to take over the international division for Hughes, the market had moved to the new very small aperture terminals (VSAT) technology. In retirement, Werth served as chairman of the Global VSAT Forum, a nonprofit industry group. He was honored by the Society of Satellite Professionals International with its first mentoring award and was named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1982.