Telstar, the first communications satellite, launched
On this day · 10 July 1962
On July 10, 1962, Telstar 1 reached orbit and soon relayed the first live television pictures across the Atlantic.
On July 10, 1962, a 171-pound sphere studded with transistors and solar cells rose from Cape Canaveral atop a Delta rocket. Telstar 1 was the world’s first active communications satellite — a relay station in the sky rather than a passive reflector — and it changed how distant continents could talk to one another.
Within a day Telstar bounced its first television pictures across the Atlantic, and on July 23 it carried the first public live transatlantic broadcast, linking American and European viewers in real time. Audiences saw the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower moments apart, a once-impossible feat.
Telstar, launched on July 10, 1962, was the world’s first active communications satellite.
The satellite also relayed telephone calls and data. Its working life lasted only seven months before high-altitude nuclear-test radiation knocked out its electronics, but it had already proven the idea that would wire the planet.
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