The Starfish Prime explosion produced energetic electrons that traveled along Earth's magnetic field lines, creating auroralike phenomena that could be seen even in Honolulu.
Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory
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In 1962 a small spherical satellite weighing about 77 kilograms was launched from Cape Canaveral. Its name was Telstar 1, and it was the first commercial telecommunications satellite—the first of a long line that have led to today's digitally connected world, where television programs and other media are easily accessible at locations across the globe.
By the following February, however, Telstar 1 had been completely fried by energetic electrons from a U.S. high-altitude nuclear test.
Walter Brown, a Bell Laboratories engineer who worked on the project, recalls Telstar 1’s triumphs and untimely demise. Currently a professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, he says it was his job to “examine how radiation in space affects solar cells and semiconductors.” He got rather more than he bargained for.
The day before launch, the U.S. had set off a nuclear explosion at an altitude of 400 kilometers just southwest of Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. The test, known as Starfish Prime, released the energy equivalent of 1.4 megatons (million tons) of TNT—creating a huge electromagnetic pulse that produced spectacular aurora over the Pacific.
"The people who set off the nuclear explosion were totally surprised by the huge number of high energy electrons that were released," Brown says. "They had no idea this would be the case until we started seeing this huge flux, a hundred times what was predicted."
The satellite unwittingly became an experiment to analyze the aftermath of a nuclear blast on electronic equipment. "We learned a lot about radiation damage from Telstar 1," he says. "Initially, Telstar 1 couldn't be turned on, some transistors had failed. But the electronics engineers figured a way around that and got it working."
Their efforts bought enough time for the satellite to prove its worth. On July 11, 1962, a day after launch, Telstar 1 relayed the television transmission of an American flag, located outside a base station in Andover, Maine, to a station in Pleumeur-Bodou, France. Brown remembers what happened at the Andover station when the satellite was turned on and radio transmission commenced: “The project leader Eugene O’Neill whooped and gave thumbs up. And soon everyone was whooping and giving thumbs-up."
On July 23, 1962, Telstar 1 relayed a public broadcast featuring Walter Cronkite, a baseball game, and segments of a news conference by President Kennedy. That evening, it transmitted the first non-cable phone call across the Atlantic.*
Telstar 1 vindicated the vision of John Robinson Pierce, a famous Bell Labs engineer who had calculated that 25 satellites placed in suitable orbits around the Earth could provide continuous communication between any two points on the globe by bouncing signals. The first test of his idea had been the Echo 1 satellite, a giant 30-meter-diameter balloon coated with a metallized film, which NASA launched in 1960. Known as a passive communications satellite because it carried no electronics but rather acted as a giant signal reflector, it was used by Bell Labs engineers to successfully bounce telephone, radio and television signals off it. Telstar 1 went a step further. It had its own power source--solar cells that generated approximately 14 watts of power, and a transponder to receive and retransmit television signals or telephone calls.
Its success against the odds inspired a generation of scientists and engineers. Louis Lanzerotti, a physicist at New Jersey Institute of Technology who spent many years at Bell Labs and worked on space missions such as Voyager, Ulysses and Galileo, was a graduate student in nuclear physics at Harvard University when Telstar 1 went into orbit. "The graduate students in the cyclotron lab talked about it," he recalls. "We talked about sending signals across the Atlantic."
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"On July 23, 1962, Telstar 1 relayed a public broadcast featuring Walter Cronkite, a baseball game, and segments of a news conference by President Kennedy. That evening, it transmitted the first phone call across the Atlantic."
That may have been the first phone call that Telstar 1 transmitted across the Atlantic, but radio based transatlantic telephone service began in 1927, and the first transatlantic telephone cable began service in 1956.
P.S., Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telephone_cable
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt was also a hit tune, a rare instrumental that went to number one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for reminding! A great tune, too, apparently inspired by the satellite success - with enough electric guitar reverb to make the listener think of EM signals 'bouncing' off the satellite...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust thought you guys would like to know that the cut-and-paste that jtdwyer did has failed. The article actually states, in part, "it transmitted the first none-cable phone call across the Atlantic." Just thought I'd let you know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat memories this article brings. The Echo launch was the first sucessful Delta launch and Telstar 1 was the tenth launch. The Echo ballon idea didn't work because the ballon became too wrinkled and didn't efficiently reflect the signals. I remember Eugene O’Neill well. He did a tough job very well. The Delta launch vechile, much upgraded is still launching satellites.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust to let you know - the article text has been changed, I presume in response to my comment. Thanks for pointing the correction out to me - I wouldn't have otherwise noticed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTechnically speaking, the correction still fails to acknowledge the radio-telephone calls made beginning in 1927. They were also non-cable phone calls...
"Its success against the odds inspired a generation of scientists and engineers"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt inspired more than just scientists and engineers. It was the inspiration/namer for the 1962 hit "Telstar" by the Tornadoes, which reached number one on the U.S. Billboard chart. Rhythm guitarist George Bellamy's son Matthew Bellamy would later go on to great fame with MUSE. So I guess it inspired quite a lot of people.
The 1853 Carrington event, a much more strong electromagnetic pulse event originated in a solar eruption, may induce worldwide catastrophic events in communications and power grids if repeated. The soviet fighter MiG 21 had bulb based on-board computers that supposedly resist much better the electromagnetic pulses than semiconductor based units, it had also a flame maintainer inside the engine that prevented engine from shutdown, there's recent work on the possibility of electromagnetic means to stinguish a flame. Some point also that just because these two features, this fighter airplane was called "The terror of saucers". Show must go on....
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