Telstar 1 (1962): First Live Transatlantic Satellite TV

Telstar 1 was the communications satellite that relayed the first live television pictures across the Atlantic Ocean. Built by Bell Telephone Laboratories and launched from Cape Canaveral on 10 July 1962, it linked ground stations in the United States, Britain and France and showed that satellites could carry television, telephone calls and data between continents. Although it worked for only a few months, it launched the era of global satellite communications.

Background: from radio to satellites

Before 1962, live pictures could not cross an ocean. Undersea telephone cables, such as the first transatlantic telephone cable TAT-1 laid in 1956, carried only a few dozen voice channels, far too little bandwidth for television. Newsreel film of events in America had to be flown to Europe, and the reverse, taking a day or more.

The idea of relaying signals from space had been discussed since the 1940s. At Bell Labs the engineer John R. Pierce argued in the 1950s that communications satellites were practical. After the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 made the idea suddenly realistic, Bell Labs took part in NASA’s Echo project, a giant reflecting balloon launched in 1960, and then designed an active satellite that would receive, amplify and retransmit signals.

Building Telstar

Telstar 1 was a roughly spherical craft about 88 centimetres (34.5 inches) across, weighing about 77 kilograms (170 pounds). Its surface was covered with some 3,600 solar cells that charged nickel-cadmium batteries. Inside, a transistorised receiver and a travelling-wave tube amplifier handled signals at around 6 gigahertz (uplink) and 4 gigahertz (downlink).

The project was unusual because it was privately funded. AT&T paid for the satellite and reimbursed NASA, reportedly around 3 million dollars, for the launch on a Thor-Delta rocket. AT&T also built a large horn antenna inside an inflated radome at Andover, Maine. Partners in Europe prepared their own stations: the British General Post Office at Goonhilly Downs in Cornwall and the French telecommunications administration at Pleumeur-Bodou in Brittany.

The first transmissions

Telstar was not in a geostationary orbit. It travelled on an elliptical path between roughly 950 and 5,600 kilometres above the Earth, circling the planet about every two and a half hours. Because of this, both sides of the Atlantic could see the satellite at the same time only for short windows of about 20 minutes or less, and the ground antennas had to track it across the sky.

On the evening of launch day, 10 July 1962, the Andover station sent television test pictures, including the American flag outside the station, up to Telstar and back down again. The same day AT&T chairman Frederick Kappel made a telephone call via the satellite to Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. On 11 July the French station at Pleumeur-Bodou received clear pictures from America, and the British station at Goonhilly also picked up signals.

The broadcast of 23 July 1962

The first formal public exchange took place on 23 July 1962. American viewers saw a European programme assembled through the Eurovision network, while European viewers watched a programme from the United States presented by American network journalists. It included views of the Statue of Liberty, part of a baseball game in Chicago and a live section of a news conference by President John F. Kennedy.

The audience across Europe and North America ran to many millions. The pictures were sometimes grainy, and the window lasted only minutes, but the sense of instant connection between continents was new and widely celebrated in the press.

Failure and legacy

Telstar’s working life was short. On 9 July 1962, the day before its launch, the United States had exploded the Starfish Prime nuclear device about 400 kilometres above the Pacific. The blast pumped extra charged particles into the Van Allen radiation belts, and these damaged satellites that passed through them. Telstar’s command circuits began to fail in November 1962. Engineers restored it temporarily in January 1963, but it went silent permanently on 21 February 1963. It remains in orbit as inactive debris.

Telstar 2 followed in May 1963, and in 1964 the international consortium Intelsat was formed. In 1965 Intelsat’s Early Bird became the first commercial geostationary communications satellite, offering permanent links across the Atlantic. Within a decade, live global events such as the Olympic Games and the Apollo 11 Moon landing reached worldwide audiences by satellite.

Telstar also entered popular culture. The Tornados’ instrumental “Telstar”, produced by Joe Meek, topped the British charts in 1962 and later the American Billboard Hot 100. The name was reused for later AT&T satellites and even for the design of a football used at the 1970 World Cup.

Timeline

• 1962, 9 July: The Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test intensifies the Van Allen radiation belts.
• 1962, 10 July: Telstar 1 is launched from Cape Canaveral; test pictures and a telephone call are relayed the same day.
• 1962, 11 July: The French station at Pleumeur-Bodou receives live television pictures from the United States.
• 1962, 23 July: The first public transatlantic television exchange is broadcast in America and Europe.
• 1962, November: Radiation damage causes Telstar’s command system to fail.
• 1963, January: Engineers briefly bring the satellite back into service.
• 1963, 21 February: Telstar 1 falls silent permanently.
• 1965, April: Early Bird, the first commercial geostationary communications satellite, is launched.

Why it matters

Telstar 1 was the practical proof that space could carry the world’s communications. Like the first transatlantic telegraph cable a century earlier, it shrank the Atlantic overnight. The satellite networks that now carry television, telephone and internet traffic around the globe trace their beginnings to this small sphere of solar cells.