Telstar may remain aloft 200 years

Telstar, the Bell System´s experimental communication satellite, will have completed hundreds of orbits around the earth by publication time of this story. As it is traveling these orbits, it provides engineers and scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories with valuable scientific information, some of which is obtained through precise tracking of Telstar by the Bell Telephone System´s Earth Station at Andover, Maine, and by NASA Minitrack stations around the world. Other information is obtained through communication tests to and from Telstar by Bell stations at Andover, and Holmdel, N.J.; by the British station at Goonhilly, Cornwall; and by the French station at Pleumeur-Bodou in Brittany. Also, a wealth of data is obtained through telemetry from Telstar and received by both Bell System and NASA stations.