Jul 28 1983
From The Space Library
NASA launched Telestar 3A for the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (AT&T) from the Eastern Space and Missile Range at 6:49 p.m. EDT on a Delta into a transfer orbit with 37,516-kilometer apogee, 185-kilometer perigee, 23 ° inclination, and 664-minute period, preparatory to moving it to geosynchronous station at 96°W over the Pacific just west of the Galapagos.
Telestar 3A was the first of a new series of three domestic communications satellites offering AT&T long-lines customers television, phone, and data service over the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico; it had 24 transponders and 6 spares, each able to relay a color-television signal at 60 million bits per second or up to 3,900 two-way phone calls. (Telestar 1 launched 21 years ago for the first transatlantic television relay could offer only 600 one-way voice channels or one television channel.) Launch of Telestar 3A was declared successful December 16. (NASA Release 83-110; NASA MOR M-492-216-83-01 [postlaunch] Dec 16/83; Spacewarn SPX-358, Aug 30/83, 2)
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