[GH85Carrera]

Technicians from Bell Telephone Laboratories perform a thorough checkout of their first Telstar experimental communications satellite (July 7, 1962). The world's first privately sponsored space launch occurred three days later at Cape Canaveral where Telstar 1 was launched into orbit on top of a Thor-Delta rocket on July 10, 1962. It successfully relayed through space the first television pictures, telephone calls, and telegraph images, and provided the first live transatlantic television feed.