Fifty years ago on July 12, the communication satellite Telstar relayed the world’s first transatlantic television signal.

Telstar 1 satellite. Image Credit: Bell Labs

 Looks a bit like a death star…

During the four months it was active, Telstar’s facilitation of a vast number of telephone, telegraph, television and facsimile transmissions well demonstrated the feasibility of the satellite communication concept.

The launch of Telstar was the birth of privately sponsored space-faring missions with AT&T footing the bill for the commercial payload.

Pretty cool, huh?

Information Credit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/telstar.html