Proposed by the US Army Signal Corps in September 1958, Courier 1B was a follow-up to SCORE program launched December 18, 1958.

SCORE "was the first step of an evolutionary program to develop communication satellite systems for use by the military services".

[3] The Project Courier was a joint program of the US Department of Defense (ARPA) along with the US Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

The mission was operated by two monitoring stations in New Jersey and Puerto Rico using special 8.5 meters of dish antennas.

[1] Courier 1B launched on 4 October 1960 at 17:45:00 GMT from the Atlantic Missile Range at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

[2] Messages were successfully received and transmitted and the satellite operated nominally until a command system failure ended communications 17 days after launch.

The message of Eisenhower was transmitted by Courier 1B from the Camp Evans, Deal Test Site, a New Jersey off-base transmission facility of Fort Monmouth.