Jul 10 1962
From The Space Library
TELSTAR, the first privately financed satellite, launched into orbit from AMR by NASA Delta booster. TELSTAR (apogee: 3,503 mi.; perigee: 593 mi.; inclination: 44.79 degrees; period: 157.8 min.) was funded by the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (AT&T) under a NASA-AT&T agreement of July 27, 1961: Bell Telephone Laboratories design and build satellites at own expense; AT&T reimburse NASA for Delta launch vehicles, launch, and tracking services (approximately $3 million per launch); Bell System conduct the communications experiments and NASA provide telemetry; and both NASA and AT&T analyze data and results, to be made available by NASA to the world scientific community.
First commercial transmission of live TV via satellite and first transatlantic TV transmission, when TELSTAR experimental communications satellite of AT&T demonstrated vast new capabilities. Pictures were telecast from AT&T center near Andover, Me., to TELSTAR, then received and placed on all three major TV networks in the U.S. TV signals also were relayed from Andover, Me., to TELSTAR, and then relayed to French antenna at Pleumeur-Bodou on the Brittany peninsula and the British station at Goonhilly, Cornwall.
In American relay experiment via TELSTAR, AT&T Board Chair- man Fred Rappel in Maine called Vice President Johnson in Washington.
In the first successful transatlantic TV transmission, picture of waving American flag was transmitted via TELSTAR to both France and Britain, while transmission was also picked up at both Andover and Hohnedel, N.J., and relayed to American TV networks.
First voice transmission from space was the Christmas message of President Eisenhower which was broadcast from USAF Project Score satellite on December 18, 1960. ECHO passive communications satellite, provided a reflector for a host of communication experiments after its launch on August 12, 1960. The moon also had been used as a reflector in communications experiments, the first being a radar reflection on January 11, 1946, by the Army Signal Corps.
President Kennedy nominated Dr. Jerome B. Wiesner to be director of the Office of Science and Technology.
Launching of TELSTAR marked tenth straight successful flight of the 3-stage Delta rocket. The history of Delta goes back to the Thor-Able and the earlier Vanguard, from which it acquired its upper stages. Originally designed as an interim booster when NASA ordered twelve Deltas from Douglas Aircraft in April 1959, it achieved what NASA Administrator Webb called "the greatest level of reliability of any of our launch vehicles . . .." The following satellites were orbited by Delta boosters: ECHO I, TIROS II, III, IV, and V; EXPLORERS X and XII; OSO I; ARIEL I; and TELSTAR.
NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) announced plans to build a cyclotron laboratory on 1,300 acres of USAF-owned land, a former Bomarc missile site, halfway between LaRC and Williamsburg, Va. The laboratory will include two accelerators to generate electrons and protons of the energies spacecraft will encounter on deep space flights.
A U.S.S.R. Tu-114, world's largest commercial airplane, left Moscow on a survey flight for direct air route to Havana, Cuba. When begun, the Moscow-Havana commercial service would mark the first regularly scheduled flights of Soviet aircraft into the Western hemisphere.
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