Astronautical and Aeronautical Events of 1962 - NASA's History Office

ASTRONAUTICAL AND AERONAUTICAL EVENTS OF 1063 117
Jdy 9: NASA scientists concluded that the layer of haze reported by
Astronauts Glenn and Carpenter was the little-understood
phenomenon called “airglow.” Using a photometer and other
instruments, Carpenter was able to measure the layer as being
%degrees . - wide. Airglow accounts for much of the light of the
night sky.
0 MIT’S Lincoln Laboratorv announced develoDment of the gallium
arsenide diode, capable of generating light ‘at wave lengths in the
near-infrared region. Use of this diode was expected to be useful
in closed-circuit television and in communication with re-entering
spacecraft, since the infrared beam may be able to penetrate the
ionized plasma sheath built up around a spacecraft as it re-enters
the earth’s atmosphere. Development was reported by R. J.
Keyes and T. M. Quist of the Lincoln Laboratory’s applied
physics group.
General Thomas D. White, former USAF Chief of Staff, wrote in
Newsweek article: “There are military requirements in space
which this nation can fail to fulfill at its grave peril. . . . I wish
we would move faster on the satellite inspector and interception.
We soon may need to verify what the Soviets have put into
space; we may someday want to shoot it down. . . . Another
intriguing concept . . . ought to have more steam and money
behind it. This is the true ‘space plane.’ ”
July 9-14: Communist-led World Peace Congress opened in Moscow
with more than 2,000 delegates from 101 countries attending.
Purpose of the Congress was to line up as much world opinion as
possible behind U.S.S.R. foreign policy, particularly in the area
of disarmament.
July 10: TELSTAR, the first privately financed satellite, launched into
orbit from AMR by NASA Delta booster. TELSTAR (apogee: 3,503
mi.; perigee: 593 mi.; inclination: 44.79 degrees; period: 157.8
min.) was funded by the American Telephone and Telegraph Co.
(AT&T) under a NASA-AT&T agreement of July 27, 1961: Bell
Telephone Laboratories design and build satellites at own
expense; ATLT reimburse NASA for Delta launch vehicles, launch,
and tracking services (approximately $3 million per launch) ;
Bell System conduct the communications experiments and NASA
provide telemetry; and both NASA and AT&T analyze data and
results, to be made available by NASA to the world scientific
community.
0 First commercial transmission of live TV via satellite and first
transatlant.ic TV transmission, when TELSTAR experimental com-
munications satellite of AT&T demonstrated vast new capabilities.
Pictures were telecast from AT~T center near Andover, Me., to
TELSTAR, then received and placed on all three major TV networks
in the U.S. TV signals also were relayed from Andover,
Me., to TELSTAR, and then relayed to French antenna at Pleumeur-Bodou
on the Brittany peninsula and the British station at
Goonhilly, Cornwall.
In American relay experiment via TELSTAR, ATLT Board Chairman
Fred Kappel in Maine called Vice President Johnson in
Washington.
In the first successful transatlantic TV transmission, picture of
waving American flag was transmitted via TELSTAR to both