Telstar 1 remained active for only 7 months before it prematurely failed due to Starfish Prime, a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States.

During the Cold War, the shock caused by the successful launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, by the Soviets increased the United States' interest in aerospace research.

According to a memorandum dated August 16, 1962, the total expenditure for the Telstar experimental satellite project, as reported by AT&T to Senator Kerr, was approximately $50 million.

This figure includes an initial estimate of $45 million as of April 19, 1962, covering the costs of orbiting the Telstar satellite and establishing a fully operational ground station in Andover, Maine.

The satellite had a transponder (receiver and transmitter) with a 50 MHz bandwidth that could relay a single television channel or a FDM signal containing multiple telephone calls or datastreams.

Telstar 1 operated normally from launch until November 1962 when the radiation from the Starfish Prime detonation affected the command channel, which began to behave erratically.

The satellite relied on an active repeater and magnified signal strength by a factor of a hundred using a travelling wave tube amplifier (TWTA).

[7][8][9] The Phillies' second baseman Tony Taylor was seen hitting a ball pitched by the Cubs' Cal Koonce to deep right field, caught by fielder George Altman for the out.

From there, the video switched first to Washington, DC; then to Cape Canaveral, Florida; to the Seattle World's Fair; then to Quebec and finally to Stratford, Ontario.

When Kennedy denied that the United States would devalue the dollar it immediately strengthened on world markets; Cronkite later said that "we all glimpsed something of the true power of the instrument we had wrought.