At 4:35 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) on July 10, 1962, a Thor-Delta
rocket launched Telstar I into its orbit, almost exactly according to
plan, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Cape
Canaveral base. On Telstar’s sixth orbit around the earth—at 7:26
p.m.—the first transmission to and from the satellite took place. During
this pass telephone calls, television, and photos were transmitted
between Andover and Holmdel. Some of these signals were also picked up
in Europe. On the next day, a taped television program was sent from
France to the United States, and a live program came from England via
Telstar. During the next four months, more than 400 transmissions were
handled by Telstar—including 50 television demonstrations (both
black-and-white and color), the sending of telephone calls and data in
both directions, and the relaying of facsimile and telephotos.
In addition, the satellite performed more than 300 valuable technical
tests. Almost all of them showed remarkably successful results. Radio
transmission was as good as was expected. Telstar’s communications
equipment worked exactly as it should, with no damage from the shock and
vibration of the launch. Temperatures inside the satellite were kept
under good control. The satellite was successfully stabilized—prevented
from tumbling over and over—by being spun around its polar axis, with
the spin rate gradually decreasing, as predicted, from its rate of 177.7
revolutions per minute just after launch. The solar cells worked almost
exactly as expected. Much extremely valuable data about radiation in
space was reported. The ground stations accurately traced the
fast-moving satellite in almost routine fashion.
But it would be asking too much to have everything perfect. Telstar I
unexpectedly met radiation in space estimated to be 100 times more
potent than had been predicted. As a result, difficulties arose during
November 1962 in some of the transistors in its command circuit—and on
pages 78 to 85 we tell you what these problems were, how they were
discovered, and what steps were taken to overcome them. Some time later
the satellite again failed to respond to commands from the ground, and
on February 21, 1963, it went silent.
[Illustration: _New gold-domed device on the Telstar II satellite
can measure electrons in an energy range from 750 thousand to 2
million electron volts._]