{"id":777,"date":"2012-07-10T09:53:57","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T09:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=777"},"modified":"2012-07-10T09:53:57","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T09:53:57","slug":"first-private-comsat-and-closest-comet-encounter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/first-private-comsat-and-closest-comet-encounter\/","title":{"rendered":"First Private ComSat, and Closest Comet Encounter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today — July 10, 1962 — Telstar 1 launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta rocket. <\/p>\n

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\n(Telstar 1. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nTelstar 1<\/a> was built by AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories, making it the first privately-built communications satellite, and broadcast the first live television signals between the U.S. and Europe. The spacecraft was short-lived — its “command channel began to behave erratically” in November and its transmitter failed in February 1963 — but it proved the concept and thereby led to the worldwide satellite communications we enjoy today.<\/p>\n

In other space history, on this date 20 years ago, the Giotto probe made a flyby of Comet Grigg-Skjellerup<\/a>, passing the comet’s nucleus at a distance of between 100-200 km (62-124 mi). It was Giotto’s second flyby, having studied Comet Halley on its primary mission, and the closest-ever flyby of a comet nucleus.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today — July 10, 1962 — Telstar 1 launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta rocket. (Telstar 1. NASA image from Wikimedia Commons.) Telstar 1 was built by AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories, making it the first privately-built communications satellite, and broadcast the first live television signals between \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31,26,74,11],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-comet","tag-launch","tag-satellite","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}