Telstar
Encyclopedia
Communications satellite
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications...
s, including the first such satellite to relay television signals.
The first two Telstar satellites were experimental and nearly identical. Telstar 1 was launched on top of a Thor-Delta
Thor-Delta
The Thor-Delta, also known as Delta DM-19 or just Delta was an early American expendable launch system used for 12 orbital launches in the early 1960s. A derivative of the Thor-Able, it was a member of the Thor family of rockets, and the first member of the Delta family.The first stage was a Thor...
rocket on July 10, 1962. It successfully relayed through space the first television pictures, telephone calls, fax
Fax
Fax , sometimes called telecopying, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material , normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device...
images and provided the first live transatlantic television feed. Telstar 2 was launched May 7, 1963.
Description
Belonging to AT&TAT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
, the original Telstar was part of a multi-national agreement between AT&T, Bell Telephone Laboratories
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
, NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, the British General Post Office, and the French National PTT (Post, Telegraph & Telecom Office)
France Télécom
France Telecom S.A. is the main telecommunications company in France, the third-largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It currently employs about 180,000 people and has 192.7 million customers worldwide . In 2010 the group had revenue of €45.5 billion...
to develop experimental satellite communications over the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
. Bell Labs held a contract with NASA, reimbursing the agency three million pounds for each launch, independent of success. The US ground station was Andover Earth Station
Andover Earth Station
Andover Earth Station is one of the first satellite earth stations, located at Andover in the US state of Maine. It was built by AT&T to communicate with the Telstar 1 satellite, the first direct relay communications satellite. It provided the first experimental satellite telephone and...
in Andover, Maine
Andover, Maine
Andover is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 864 at the 2000 census. Set among mountains and crossed by the Appalachian Trail, Andover is home to the Andover Earth Station and Lovejoy Covered Bridge.-History:...
, built by Bell Labs.
The main British ground station was at Goonhilly Downs
Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station
Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station is a large telecommunications site located on Goonhilly Downs near Helston on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, England, UK. Owned by BT Group plc, it was at one time the largest satellite earth station in the world, with more than 25 communications dishes in use...
in southwestern England, and it was used by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. It was the international coordinator and the standards 525/405 conversion equipment (filling a large room) was researched and developed by the BBC and located in the BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre at White City in West London is the headquarters of BBC Television. Officially opened on 29 June 1960, it remains one of the largest to this day; having featured over the years as backdrop to many BBC programmes, it is one of the most readily recognisable such facilities...
, London. The French ground station was at Pleumeur-Bodou (48°47′10"N 3°31′26"W) in north-western France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
The satellite was built by a team at Bell Telephone Laboratories, including John Robinson Pierce
John Robinson Pierce
John Robinson Pierce , was an American engineer and author. He worked extensively in the fields of radio communication, microwave technology, computer music, psychoacoustics, and science fiction. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, he earned his Ph.D...
, who created the project; Rudy Kompfner, who invented the traveling wave tube
Traveling wave tube
A traveling-wave tube is an electronic device used to amplify radio frequency signals to high power, usually in an electronic assembly known as a traveling-wave tube amplifier ....
transponder used in the satellite; and James M. Early
James M. Early
James M. Early was an American engineer, best known for his work on transistors and charge-coupled device imagers. He is also known as Jim Early....
, who designed its transistors and solar panels. The satellite is roughly spherical, measures 34.5 inches (876.3 mm) in length, and weighs about 170 pounds (77.1 kg). Its dimensions were limited by what would fit on one of NASA's Delta rocket
Delta rocket
Delta is a versatile family of expendable launch systems that has provided space launch capability in the United States since 1960. There have been more than 300 Delta rockets launched, with a 95 percent success rate. Two Delta launch systems – Delta II and Delta IV – are in active use...
s. Telstar was spin-stabilized, and its outer surface was covered with solar cell
Solar cell
A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....
s to generate electrical power. The power produced was a tiny 14 watts.
The original Telstar had one innovative transponder
Transponder (Satellite communications)
A communications satellite’s transponder, is the series of interconnected units which form a communications channel between the receiving and the transmitting antennas .A transponder is typically composed of:...
to relay data, which was a television channel or multiplexed
Frequency-division multiplexing
Frequency-division multiplexing is a form of signal multiplexing which involves assigning non-overlapping frequency ranges to different signals or to each "user" of a medium.- Telephone :...
telephone circuits. An omnidirectional
Omnidirectional antenna
In radio communication, an omnidirectional antenna is an antenna which radiates radio wave power uniformly in all directions in one plane, with the radiated power decreasing with elevation angle above or below the plane, dropping to zero on the antenna's axis. This radiation pattern is often...
array of small antenna elements around the satellite's "equator" received 6 GHz microwave
Microwave
Microwaves, a subset of radio waves, have wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF , and various sources use different boundaries...
signals to be relayed. The transponder converted the frequency
Frequency mixer
In electronics a mixer or frequency mixer is a nonlinear electrical circuit that creates new frequencies from two signals applied to it. In its most common application, two signals at frequencies f1 and f2 are applied to a mixer, and it produces new signals at the sum f1 + f2 and difference f1 -...
to 4 GHz, amplified the signals in a traveling-wave tube, and retransmitted them omnidirectionally via the adjacent array of larger box-shaped cavities. The prominent helical antenna
Helical antenna
A helical antenna is an antenna consisting of a conducting wire wound in the form of a helix. In most cases, helical antennas are mounted over a ground plane. The feed line is connected between the bottom of the helix and the ground plane...
was for telecommand
Telecommand
A telecommand is a command sent to control a remote system or systems not directly connected to the place from which the telecommand is sent. The word is derived from tele = remote , and command = to entrust/order...
s from a ground station.
Launched by NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
aboard a Delta rocket
Delta rocket
Delta is a versatile family of expendable launch systems that has provided space launch capability in the United States since 1960. There have been more than 300 Delta rockets launched, with a 95 percent success rate. Two Delta launch systems – Delta II and Delta IV – are in active use...
from Cape Canaveral
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is an installation of the United States Air Force Space Command's 45th Space Wing, headquartered at nearby Patrick Air Force Base. Located on Cape Canaveral in the state of Florida, CCAFS is the primary launch head of America's Eastern Range with four launch pads...
on July 10, 1962, Telstar 1 was the first privately-sponsored space launch. A medium-altitude satellite, Telstar was placed in an elliptical orbit
Orbit
In physics, an orbit is the gravitationally curved path of an object around a point in space, for example the orbit of a planet around the center of a star system, such as the Solar System...
completed once every 2 hours and 37 minutes, inclined at an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the equator, with perigee
Perigee
Perigee is the point at which an object makes its closest approach to the Earth.. Often the term is used in a broader sense to define the point in an orbit where the orbiting body is closest to the body it orbits. The opposite is the apogee, the farthest or highest point.The Greek prefix "peri"...
about 1000 km from Earth and apogee about 6000 km from Earth This is in contrast to most of today's communications satellites, which are placed in circular geostationary orbit
Geostationary orbit
A geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit directly above the Earth's equator , with a period equal to the Earth's rotational period and an orbital eccentricity of approximately zero. An object in a geostationary orbit appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers...
s.
Due to its non-geosynchronous orbit
Geosynchronous orbit
A geosynchronous orbit is an orbit around the Earth with an orbital period that matches the Earth's sidereal rotation period...
, Telstar's availability for transatlantic signals was limited to the 20 minutes in each 2.5 hour orbit when the satellite passed over the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
. Ground antennas had to track the satellite with a pointing error of less than 0.06 degrees as it moved across the sky at up to 1.5 degrees per second.
Since the transmitting and receiving radio systems on board Telstar were not nearly as powerful or capable as those of today's satellites, the ground antennas had to be huge. Morimi Iwama and Jan Norton of Bell Laboratories were in charge of designing and building the electrical portions of the system that steered the antennas. The aperture of the antennas was 3600 square feet (334.5 m²). The antennas were 177 feet (53.9 m) long and weighed 380 tons. The antennas were housed in radome
Radome
A radome is a structural, weatherproof enclosure that protects a microwave or radar antenna. The radome is constructed of material that minimally attenuates the electromagnetic signal transmitted or received by the antenna. In other words, the radome is transparent to radar or radio waves...
s the size of a 14-story office building.
In service
Telstar 1 relayed its first, and non-public, television pictures—a flag outside Andover Earth Station —to Pleumeur-Bodou on July 11, 1962. Almost two weeks later, on July 23, at 3:00 p.m. EDT, it relayed the first publicly available live transatlantic television signal. The broadcast was made possible in Europe by EurovisionEurovision Network
The Eurovision Network is part of the European Broadcasting Union, itself founded in 1950 as a system of international broadcasting cooperation...
and in North America by NBC, CBS, ABC, and the CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
. The first public broadcast featured CBS's Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
and NBC's Chet Huntley
Chet Huntley
Chester Robert "Chet" Huntley was an American television newscaster, best known for co-anchoring NBC's evening news program, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, for 14 years beginning in 1956.-Early life:...
in New York, and the BBC's Richard Dimbleby
Richard Dimbleby
Richard Dimbleby CBE was an English journalist and broadcaster widely acknowledged as one of the greatest figures in British broadcasting history.-Early life:...
in Brussels. The first pictures were the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The first broadcast was to have been remarks by President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, but the signal was acquired before the president was ready, so the lead-in time was filled with a short segment of a televised major league baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
game between the Philadelphia Phillies
Philadelphia Phillies
The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League Baseball team. They are the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports, dating to 1883. The Phillies are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League...
and the Chicago Cubs
Chicago Cubs
The Chicago Cubs are a professional baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's National League. They are one of two Major League clubs based in Chicago . The Cubs are also one of the two remaining charter members of the National...
at Wrigley Field
Wrigley Field
Wrigley Field is a baseball stadium in Chicago, Illinois, United States that has served as the home ballpark of the Chicago Cubs since 1916. It was built in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Chicago Federal League baseball team, the Chicago Whales...
. The batter, Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
Antonio Nemesio Taylor is a former second baseman in Major League Baseball. From 1958 through , Taylor played for the Chicago Cubs , Philadelphia Phillies and Detroit Tigers...
, was seen hitting a ball pitched by Cal Koonce to the right fielder George Altman
George Altman
George Lee Altman is a former outfielder in Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball. From through , Altman played for the Chicago Cubs , St. Louis Cardinals and New York Mets...
. From there, the video switched first to Washington, DC; then to Cape Canaveral, Florida; then to Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, Canada and finally to Stratford, Ontario
Stratford, Ontario
Stratford is a city on the Avon River in Perth County in southwestern Ontario, Canada with a population of 32,000.When the area was first settled by Europeans in 1832, the townsite and the river were named after Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It is the seat of Perth County. Stratford was...
. The Washington segment included a press conference with President Kennedy, talking about the price of the American dollar, which was causing concern in Europe.
During that evening, Telstar 1 also relayed the first telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
call to be transmitted through space, and it successfully transmitted faxes, data, and both live and taped television, including the first live transmission of television across an ocean from Andover, Maine to Goonhilly Downs, England and Pleumeur-Bodou, France. (An experimental passive satellite, Echo 1
Echo satellite
Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. Each of the two American spacecraft was a metalized balloon satellite acting as a passive reflector of microwave signals. Communication signals were bounced off of them from one point on Earth to another.-Echo 1:NASA's Echo 1...
, had been used to reflect and redirect communications signals two years earlier, in 1960.) In August 1962, Telstar 1 became the first satellite used to synchronize time between two continents, bringing the United Kingdom and the United States to within 1 microsecond of each other (previous efforts were only accurate to 2000 microseconds).
Telstar 1, which had ushered in a new age of the benevolent use of technology, became a victim of technology during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. The day before Telstar 1 was launched, the United States had tested a high-altitude nuclear bomb (called Starfish Prime
Starfish Prime
Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States of America on July 9, 1962, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Atomic Support Agency ....
) which energized the Earth's Van Allen Belt where Telstar 1 went into orbit. This vast increase in radiation, combined with subsequent high-altitude blasts, including a Soviet test in October, overwhelmed Telstar's fragile transistors; it went out of service in early December 1962, but was restarted by a workaround in early January 1963. The additional radiation associated with its return to full sunlight once again caused a transistor failure, this time irreparably, and Telstar 1 went out of service on February 21, 1963.
According to the US Space Objects Registry, Telstar 1 and 2 were still in orbit as of May 2010.
Experiments continued, and by 1964, two Telstars, two Relay
Relay program
The Relay program consisted of Relay 1 and Relay 2, two early American satellites. Both were primarily experimental communications satellites funded by NASA and developed by RCA. As of September 12, 2009, both satellites were still in orbit...
units (from RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
), and two Syncom
Syncom
Syncom started as a 1961 NASA program for active geosynchronous communication satellites, all of which were developed and manufactured by Hughes Space and Communications...
units (from the Hughes Aircraft Company) had operated successfully in space. Syncom 2 was the first geosynchronous satellite
Geosynchronous satellite
A geosynchronous Satellite is a satellite whose orbit on the Earth repeats regularly over points on the Earth over time. If such a satellite's orbit lies over the equator, the orbit is circular and its angular velocity is the same as the earth's, then it is called a geostationary satellite...
and its successor, Syncom 3, broadcast pictures from the 1964 Summer Olympics
1964 Summer Olympics
The 1964 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Tokyo, Japan in 1964. Tokyo had been awarded with the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this honor was subsequently passed to Helsinki because of Japan's...
. The first commercial geosynchronous satellite
Geosynchronous satellite
A geosynchronous Satellite is a satellite whose orbit on the Earth repeats regularly over points on the Earth over time. If such a satellite's orbit lies over the equator, the orbit is circular and its angular velocity is the same as the earth's, then it is called a geostationary satellite...
was Intelsat I
Intelsat I
Intelsat I was the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, on April 6, 1965...
("Early Bird") launched in 1965.
Newer Telstars
Subsequent Telstar satellites were advanced commercial geosynchronous spacecraft that share only their name with Telstar 1 and 2.The second wave of Telstar satellites launched with Telstar 301
Telstar 301
Telstar 301 is an American communications satellite launched in July 1983 by AT&T. It was one of three Telstar 3 satellites, followed by Telstar 302 in 1984 and Telstar 303 in 1985....
in 1983, followed by Telstar 302 in 1984 (which was renamed Telstar 3-D after carried into space by Shuttle mission STS-41-D
STS-41-D
STS-41-D was the first flight of NASA's Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery. It was the 12th mission of the Space Shuttle program, and was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 30 August 1984...
), and by Telstar 303 in 1985.
The next wave, starting with Telstar 401
Telstar 401
Telstar 401 was a communications satellite owned by AT&T which was launched in 1993 to replace Telstar 301. It was destroyed by a magnetic storm in 1997....
, came in 1993; which was lost in 1997 due to a magnetic storm, and then Telstar 402 was launched but destroyed shortly after in 1994. It was replaced in 1995 by Telstar 402R, eventually renamed Telstar 4.
Telstar 10
Telstar 10
Telstar 10, also known as Apstar 2R, located at 76.5°E , is a communications satellite equipped with 27 C band and 24 Ku band transponders . The C band payload provides coverage of Asia, Australia, parts of Europe and Africa. The Ku band payload covers Korea, Taiwan, Macau and China, including Hong...
was launched in China in 1997 by APT Satellite Company, Ltd.
In 2003, Telstars 4–8 and 13 — Loral Skynet's North American fleet — were sold to Intelsat
Intelsat
Intelsat, Ltd. is a communications satellite services provider.Originally formed as International Telecommunications Satellite Organization , it was—from 1964 to 2001—an intergovernmental consortium owning and managing a constellation of communications satellites providing international broadcast...
. Telstar 4 suffered complete failure prior to the handover. The others were renamed the Intelsat Americas
Intelsat Americas
Intelsat Americas, was the re-designation given to the several Telstar satellites serving North America following their sale to Intelsat by Loral Space & Communications in 2003...
5, 6, etc. At the time of the sale, Telstar 8 was still under construction by Space Systems/Loral
Space Systems/Loral
Space Systems/Loral , of Palo Alto, California, is the wholly owned manufacturing subsidiary of Loral Space & Communications. It was acquired in 1990 for $715 million by Loral Corp. from Ford Motor Company as the Space Systems Division of Ford Aerospace...
, and it was finally launched on June 23, 2005 by Sea Launch
Sea Launch
Sea Launch is a spacecraft launch service that uses a mobile sea platform for equatorial launches of commercial payloads on specialized Zenit 3SL rockets...
.
Telstar 18 was launched in June 2004 by Sea Launch
Sea Launch
Sea Launch is a spacecraft launch service that uses a mobile sea platform for equatorial launches of commercial payloads on specialized Zenit 3SL rockets...
. The upper stage of the rocket underperformed, but the satellite used its significant stationkeeping fuel margin to achieve its operational geostationary orbit
Geostationary orbit
A geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit directly above the Earth's equator , with a period equal to the Earth's rotational period and an orbital eccentricity of approximately zero. An object in a geostationary orbit appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers...
. It has enough on-board fuel remaining to allow it to exceed its specified 13-year design life.
Derivative uses of the name
Joe MeekJoe Meek
Robert George "Joe" Meek was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter....
composed a popular instrumental recording in 1962, named "Telstar
Telstar (song)
"Telstar" is a 1962 instrumental record performed by The Tornados. It was the first single by a British band to reach number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and was also a number one hit in the UK. The record was named after the AT&T communications satellite Telstar, which went into orbit in...
" after the satellite; it was originally performed by The Tornados
The Tornados
The Tornados were an English instrumental group of the 1960s that acted as backing group for many of record producer Joe Meek's productions and also for singer Billy Fury. They enjoyed several chart hits in their own right, including the UK and U.S. Number One "Telstar" , the first U.S...
and covered by The Ventures
The Ventures
The Ventures is an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 in Tacoma, Washington. Founded by Don Wilson and Bob Bogle, the group in its various incarnations has had an enduring impact on the development of music worldwide. With over 100 million records sold, the group is the best-selling...
and Bobby Rydell
Bobby Rydell
Bobby Rydell is an American professional singer, mainly of rock and roll music. In the early 1960s he was considered a so-called "teen idol"...
among many others. Sound effects on the record, intended to symbolize radio signals, were produced by Meek running a pen around the rim of an ashtray, and then playing the tape of it in reverse.
Dutch singer, composer and record producer Johnny Hoes founded his own record label in the early 1960s, which he named Telstar. It soon became one of the Netherlands' most successful independent record companies.
Robert Calvert
Robert Calvert
Robert Calvert was a writer, poet, and musician.-Biography:Born Robert Newton Calvert in Pretoria, South Africa, Calvert's parents moved to England when he was two years of age and later attended school in London and Margate. He began his career by writing poetry and in 1967 formed a Street...
wrote lyrics which he performed in the early 1980s to the tune of the Joe Meek
Joe Meek
Robert George "Joe" Meek was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter....
and The Tornados
The Tornados
The Tornados were an English instrumental group of the 1960s that acted as backing group for many of record producer Joe Meek's productions and also for singer Billy Fury. They enjoyed several chart hits in their own right, including the UK and U.S. Number One "Telstar" , the first U.S...
song, which was covered by the instrumental band Hot Butter
Hot Butter
Hot Butter was an instrumental cover band fronted by the keyboard player Stan Free. The other band members were Dave Mullaney, John Abbott, Bill Jerome, Steve Jerome, and Danny Jordan. They are best known for their 1972 cover of the Moog synthpop instrumental, "Popcorn", originally recorded by its...
.
Susanna Hoffs
Susanna Hoffs
Susanna Lee Hoffs is an American vocalist, guitarist and actress. She is best known as a member of the all-female pop band The Bangles.-Early life:...
released "Wishing On Telstar" on her 1991 album When You're a Boy
When You're a Boy
When You're a Boy is the debut solo album by Susanna Hoffs. It begins with the Billboard Top 40 single "My Side of the Bed", includes the track "Unconditional Love" , and ends with a cover of "Boys Keep Swinging", the 1979 song written by David Bowie and Brian Eno.The album peaked at #83 on the...
.
Takako Minekawa
Takako Minekawa
is a Japanese musician, composer and writer.-Background:As an accomplished all-around musician, Minekawa's musical skills set her firmly outside of the J-Pop "idol" tradition: she writes and composes most of her material, singing quirky lyrics about subjects such as clouds, cats, and the color...
covered the Joe Meek
Joe Meek
Robert George "Joe" Meek was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter....
and The Tornados
The Tornados
The Tornados were an English instrumental group of the 1960s that acted as backing group for many of record producer Joe Meek's productions and also for singer Billy Fury. They enjoyed several chart hits in their own right, including the UK and U.S. Number One "Telstar" , the first U.S...
classic song on her 1998 album Cloudy Cloud Calculator
Cloudy Cloud Calculator
Cloudy Cloud Calculator is a 1997 album by Takako Minekawa. It was released by Emperor Norton Records in the United States. It is Minekawa's fourth album...
.
In the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, a football club formed from a merger was named SC Telstar after the satellites.
The Scottish band Telstar Ponies
Telstar Ponies
Telstar Ponies are a rock band formed in Glasgow, Scotland in 1994. They were signed to Fire Records Their musical style varies considerably but displays obvious influences from Krautrock, folk , and experimental noise.-History:...
included Teenage Fanclub
Teenage Fanclub
Teenage Fanclub are an alternative rock band from Bellshill, Scotland. The band is composed of Norman Blake , Raymond McGinley , Gerard Love and Francis MacDonald , with songwriting duties shared equally among Blake, McGinley and Love...
drummer Brendan O'Hare
Brendan O'Hare
Brendan O'Hare is a Scottish musician, best known as drummer in the Scottish rock band Teenage Fanclub from 1990 until early 1994.-Career:...
.
The Telstar
Ford Telstar
The Ford Telstar is an automobile that was sold by the Ford Motor Company in Asia, Australasia and Africa, comparable in size to the European Ford Sierra and the American Ford Tempo. It has been progressively replaced by the Ford Mondeo....
was also the name of a Ford
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
car
Automobile
An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
sold in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, Australasia
Australasia
Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes...
and Southern Africa
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...
.
Telstar Regional High School in Bethel, Maine
Bethel, Maine
Bethel is a town in Oxford County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,411 at the 2000 census. It includes the villages of West Bethel and South Bethel...
, is named after the satellite.
1970 FIFA World Cup
The 1970 FIFA World Cup, the ninth staging of the World Cup, was held in Mexico, from 31 May to 21 June. The 1970 tournament was the first World Cup hosted in North America, and the first held outside South America and Europe. In a match-up of two-time World Cup champions, the final was won by...
and 1974
1974 FIFA World Cup
The 1974 FIFA World Cup, the tenth staging of the World Cup, was held in West Germany from 13 June to 7 July. The tournament marked the first time that the current trophy, the FIFA World Cup Trophy, created by the Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga, was awarded...
FIFA World Cup
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association , the sport's global governing body...
tournaments, and its design has subsequently become the stereotypical look for a football.
Project: Telstar is an anthology of robot-and space-themed comics published in 2003 by AdHouse Books
AdHouse Books
AdHouse Books is an independent comic book publisher based in Richmond, Virginia. It was founded in 2002 by graphic designer Chris Pitzer. Its small annual output and high-end production values have earned it the nickname "The Boutique Juggernaut."...
.
The Coleco Telstar
Coleco Telstar
The Telstar is a series of video game consoles produced by Coleco from 1976 to 1978. Starting with Telstar Pong clone based on General Instrument's AY-3-8500 chip in 1976, there were 14 consoles released in the Telstar branded series.-Models:...
was a 1970s video game console
Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...
based on the General Instruments AY-3-8500
AY-3-8500
The AY-3-8500 "Ball & Paddle" integrated circuit was the first in a series of ICs from General Instrument designed for the consumer video game market. These chips were designed to output video to an RF modulator which would then display the game on a domestic TV set. The AY-3-8500 contained six...
chip.
There is an optional boss character called Telstar in the video game Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy VI
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square , released in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as a part of the Final Fantasy series. Set in a fantasy world with a technology level equivalent to that of the Second Industrial Revolution, the game's story focuses on a...
.
External links
- Walter CronkiteWalter CronkiteWalter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
on the first broadcast using Telstar: http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/20020723.atc.15.ram - List of Communications Satellites
- National Geographic Magazine article on Telstar from the May, 1962 issue
- Universal Newsreel on Telstar
- Stamps and envelopes related to Telstar I
- Real-Time tracking of Telstar 1