(Credit: NASA)
When you're watching the London Olympics later this month on your big-screen TV, you probably won't give a second thought to how those images got to you from across the ocean. Hit the Power button on your remote, and presto -- the 4x100 relay, live, and in the moment.
It wasn't always so.
Once upon a time, and not so long ago, watching faraway events as they unfolded was an exotic thing, a rarity marked by the phrase "Live, via satellite." Look back just 50 years, and you'll find the satellite that got it all started: Telstar. After Russia's Sputnik, it might be the one satellite that most people actually know of by name. (Sorry, Courier, Explorer, Echo, and TIROS.)
It was 50 years ago today that Telstar, which had been lofted into low-Earth orbit two days earlier, relayed the first-ever transatlantic television signal, flung skyward and eastward from the Andover Earth Station in the Maine hinterlands to the Pleumeur-Bodou Telecom Center in Brittany, France.
That first Telstar wasn't around all that long. Within four months, its on-board electronics had been done in by radiation. (Besides being a conduit for communications, Telstar also served as a guinea pig to help researchers understand the effects of Van Allen Belt energy on communications satellites.) But in... [Read more]
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