- Courier 1B
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Courier 1B 
Courier 1 satelliteOperator United States Air Force Launch date 4 October 1960 Carrier rocket Thor DM-21 Ablestar Launch site Cape Canaveral LC-17B Mission duration 17 days (achieved) Mass 230 kilograms (510 lb) Orbital elements Regime Low Earth Eccentricity 0.0165358 Inclination 28.3° Apoapsis 1,214 kilometres (754 mi) Periapsis 967 kilometres (601 mi) Orbital period 107.1 minutes Courier 1B was the world's first active repeater satellite after launch on 4 October 1960. Courier was built by the Palo Alto, California–based Western Development Labs (WDL) division of Philco, previously known as Army Fort Monmouth Laboratories and now the Space Systems/Loral division of Loral Space & Communications.
Proposed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in September 1958, Courier was a follow-on to Project SCORE launched in 1958. The first satellite in the series, Courier 1A, was lost in a launch failure 2.5 minutes after liftoff. Courier used approximately 19,000 solar cells and was the first satellite to use nickel–cadmium storage batteries. It had an effective message transmission rate of 55,000 bits per second.
After completing its first orbit, a message from US President Dwight Eisenhower to the United Nations was transmitted from the Deal Test Site, an off-base transmission facility of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey and relayed to a ground station in Puerto Rico.
After 228 orbits in 17 days, the payload failed to respond to commands from the ground. It was believed that the clock-based access codes got out of synchronization and the satellite would not respond to what it interpreted as unauthorized commands.
See also
External links
← 1959 · Orbital launches in 1960 · 1961 → Discoverer 9 | Discoverer 10 | Midas 1 | Pioneer 5 | S-46 | TIROS-1 | Transit 1B · Solrad | Discoverer 11 | Luna E-3 No.1 | Luna E-3 No.2 | Echo 1 | Korabl-Sputnik 1 | Midas 2 | Transit 2A · Solrad 1 | Discoverer 12 | Vostok-1K No.1 | Discoverer 13 | Echo 1A | Courier 1A | Discoverer 14 | Korabl-Sputnik 2 | Discoverer 15 | Pioneer P-30 | Courier 1B | Mars 1M No.1 | Samos 1 | Mars 1M No.2 | Discoverer 16 | Explorer 8 | Discoverer 17 | TIROS-2 | Transit 3A · Solrad 2 | Korabl-Sputnik 3 | Explorer S-55 | Discoverer 18 | Pioneer P-31 | Discoverer 19 | Vostok-1K No.4Payloads are separated by bullets ( · ), launches by pipes ( | ). Manned flights are indicated in bold text. Uncatalogued launch failures are listed in italics. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are denoted in brackets. Categories:- Communications satellites in low Earth orbit
- 1960 in spaceflight
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