© Mark Ollig
July 10, 1962, the 90-foot-tall three-stage Thor-Delta rocket lifted off the pad from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 17-B in Florida.
Inside the top of the Thor-Delta rocket’s enclosed payload shroud (fairing) was the Telstar 1 satellite.
Telstar 1 is a 34.5 inches in diameter spherical spacecraft weighing 170 pounds and developed by AT&T’s Bell Laboratories engineers.
This spacecraft became the world’s first communications satellite to transmit live television between the US and Europe.
In 1954, John Robinson Pierce of Bell Telephone Laboratories began researching earth-orbiting satellite repeaters.
The following year, Pierce wrote a book titled “Orbital Radio Relays,” which provided an alternative to copper cable and ground-based microwave radio transmission to relay transoceanic telecommunications between the US and Europe.
In the book, he proposed transmitting and receiving communications between the US and European continents using ground-based radio towers, with the relay path between them (Atlantic Ocean) through earth-orbiting satellites, which provided the vision for future satellite communication projects.
Oct. 4, 1957, a Soviet Union R-7 Semyorka rocket launched the Sputnik 1 satellite into space. It was the first artificial satellite to orbit our planet.
Using a Jupiter-C rocket, the US successfully launched the Explorer 1 satellite and placed it into earth orbit Jan. 31, 1958.
Explorer 1 was the first US satellite to orbit the earth. It was equipped with a cosmic ray detector which discovered strong radiation belts held in space by the earth’s magnetic field. The discovery became known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts.
Aug. 12, 1960, NASA launched an inflated metallic balloon satellite, Echo 1.
Echo 1 was placed into a circular earth orbit of about 1,000 miles. It successfully reflected radio signals from ground-based stations transmitted and received across the US. An audio voice message by President Eisenhower was also relayed using Echo 1.
Echo 1 provided the incentive for building the Telstar satellite.
However, “Telstar involved problems of a scope and magnitude far beyond any we had faced in Echo,” said John Robinson Pierce.
The Telstar communications satellite became the first internationally funded space project.
Bell Telephone Laboratories in the US, the British General Post Office, its French equivalent called Postes Télégraphes et Téléphones, and NASA were behind the project.
The Telstar 1 satellite was equipped with the best technology and electronics available in 1962, including its transmitter and receiver, and strongly resembles how today’s satellites operate.
Telstar 1 was powered by nickel-cadmium batteries which were recharged using 3,600 solar cells surrounding the outer shell of the satellite.
The satellite contained more than 1,000 transistors and other electronic components, including a TWT (traveling-wave tube) capable of amplifying a wide range of radio frequencies.
July 12, 1962, the Telstar 1 satellite relayed the first live trans-Atlantic television broadcast of an American flag flying over the Andover, ME, ground-based receiving station.
This live broadcast was received by ground-based stations in England and France and was seen in other European locations.
The Telstar 1 satellite transmitted a black-and-white television broadcast of the Statue of Liberty, a message from President John F. Kennedy, portions of a baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Chicago Cubs, the Eiffel Tower, and music by French singer Yves Montand.
Large audiences on both sides of the Atlantic watched the first international exchange of live television with amazement.
Telephone calls, facsimile, telephoto images, telegraph messages, and other data between the US and Europe were, for the first time, broadcast in real-time via the Telstar 1 earth-orbiting satellite.
Telstar 1 also relayed to Europe and Britain live television coverage of major news events.
According to NASA’s website, the Telstar 1 satellite “operated until November 1962, when its onboard electronics failed due to the effects of radiation.”
There are stories stating the source of the radiation, and thus the failure of the Telstar 1 satellite resulted from a US-conducted high-altitude nuclear explosion test.
July 9, 1962, a US Thor missile launched from an island 900 miles southwest of Hawaii carried a 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead which detonated 250 miles above our planet (over the Pacific Ocean) in what was known as Starfish Prime.
A related side note: Aug. 5, 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union banning nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater. It went into effect Oct. 10, 1963.
According to sources, engineers managed to reactivate the Telstar 1 satellite Dec. 10, 1962; intermittent data was obtained from it until Feb. 21, 1963.
“To my mind, satellites came from three sources, from an interest in space engendered by science fiction, from actual space activities, and from an interest in communication,” said John Robinson Pierce in 1980.
John Robinson Pierce was born March 27, 1910, in Des Moines, IA, and passed away at 92 April 2, 2002, in Sunnyvale, CA.
Today, the inactive Telstar 1 satellite is still orbiting our planet with an average apogee (highest point over the globe) of 3,500 miles and a perigee (nearest point to earth) of 590 miles.
July 10, Telstar 1 will reach the milestone of having been in earth orbit for 60 years. After that, it will continue orbiting our planet for another 200 years until the earth’s gravity pulls it back and it burns up in our atmosphere.
To see where the Telstar 1 satellite is, go to: https://bit.ly/3bm8dgd.
On my bookshelf, I display a stamped July 10, 1962, “Communications For Peace” Andover, Maine, envelope commemorating the Project Telstar communications satellite program. Below is a photo I took.
 |
| Image capture of the Telstar 1 location from June 30, 2022 at 2:05 PM CST |
