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Early Bird
- The world's first operational geostationary communications satellite, also known as Intelsat 1. It was launched in 1965 and provided 240 telephone channels from its station over the Atlantic at a time when transatlantic cables only provided 412 channels.
- A commercial Earth resources and reconnaissance satellite owned by EarthWatch of Longmont, Colorado. Images from Early Bird – the world’s first private “spy” satellite – were to have shown detail as small as three meters across and been available to anyone for a fee of a few hundred dollars. However, contact with the spacecraft was lost shortly after its launch on Dec. 24, 1997, by a Start 1 rocket from Svobodniy into a 479 × 488 km × 97.3° orbit.
Related category
• SATELLITES AND SPACE PROBES
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Encyclopedia of Alternative Energy & Sustainable Living
Encyclopedia of History
Transport Concepts & Designs (partner site)