RELAY
TELSTAR, SYNCOM & THE GEOSTATIONARY IDEA
In July 1962 the first live television pictures crossed the Atlantic by satellite.
BEGIN — CHAPTER 01 →An orbit that turns with the Earth
Potočnik put his station 35,900 km up [1].
Clarke, 1945: three stations, 42,000 km [2].
Higher is slower
Below GEO the satellite drifts east, above it drifts west.
Echo 1, Telstar and Relay 1 on the same curve.
Altitude above the equatorial radius.
Eighteen minutes at a time
Echo 1 reflected; Telstar amplified.
Andover, Pleumeur-Bodou, 18 minutes.
Telstar's real orbit, one day.
Model note.
Starfish Prime killed Telstar [6].
Relay 1 mapped the belts [7].
Twenty-four hours, and then zero degrees
Syncom 2: geosynchronous, tilted 33° [8].
Syncom 3: geostationary, Tokyo 1964 [9].
Left alone, the tilt grows to ~15° over 53 years [18].
Inclined orbits need tracking antennas.
Track note.
Molniya: twelve hours, mostly in the north
GEO is low in the northern sky.
Molniya-1, 1965; Orbita, 1967 [12][14].
Molniya model note.
A third of the world, a quarter of a second away
Footprint: 42 % of Earth; three satellites overlap.
Delay: 0.24–0.28 s one way.
Station-keeping box: 0.05° ≈ 37 km [20].
568 active geosynchronous satellites (October 2026) [21].
Sixty years of relays
Telstar proved it could be done; Syncom proved it could be done standing still.