posted 07-17-2022 10:11 AM               

Space Cover #659: Telstar-1 and the Birth of Active Satellite Communications

As early as 1945, Arthur C. Clarke theorized the use of Earth orbiting satellites that would relay radio signals great distances. It would be another 12 years before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik-1 to become the first artificial satellite orbiting Earth. It contained a radio transmitter that would send down a signal that would beep across the sky.

There were a number of passive communication satellites launched in the year or so after Sputnik. These would send down a recorded message as with Project SCORE or be used to bounce a signal from one location to another as with ECHO.

Telstar-1 was launched to become the first active communications satellite and it allowed the first live television broadcast between the United States and Europe. Telstar-1 used an active repeater and modified the signal strength to accomplish this broadcast. It became the forerunner of the TV, telephone and general communications satellites we use everyday.

This past week marked the 60th anniversary of the launch of Telstar-1. It was launched on a Thor-Delta on July 10, 1962 from Cape Canaveral. Telstar-1 operated normally until November 1962 when the high-altitude nuclear detonation from Starfish Prime severely affected the command channel. Telstar-1 was officially deactivated on February 21, 1963. It is still in orbit today.

The cover pictured above commemorates the launch of Telstar-1. Postmarked July 10, 1962 with a Patrick AFB cancel, the cover has the popular Space Craft Covers cachet. The cover is also signed by John R. Pierce. Mr. Pierce was the executive director of Bell Lab's Research Communications Principles Division which was responsible for the development and building of Telstar-1.

posted 08-01-2022 06:41 PM               

I think Eddie's displayed satellite cover for Telstar 1, "Tower in the Sky," by Carl Swanson of SpaceCraft Covers is one of my favorite satellite cachet covers. I love its three to four color printing with the highlights of the new satellite program and its major objectives outlined in the cachet text. All the graphic design elements come nicely together.

Below are a few other cachet designed covers for Telstar 1 that includes a rather simple-looking rubber stamp cachet by Swanson for the liftoff, a not too-often seen Rank velvet cachet cover posted at Andover, Maine, on the same day of a CBS-Broadcast of the first TV show by the first Telstar with President Eisenhower and the leaders of France and Germany. Others depicted below are a nice Bell System's company cachet cover from Andover along with a Sarzin "First Outer Space Communications" heading, a Fleetwood United Nations "Supports the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space" cover with a December 1962 UN pictorial-slogan cancel, and a few official first day cover issues commemorating Telstar in France with attractive and colorful printed cachets all that same year.