Satellite television C. Clarke proposed a worldwide communications system which would function by means of three satellites equally spaced apart in earth orbit. This was published in the October 1945 issue of the Wireless World magazine and won him the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963. The first public satellite television signals from Europe to North America were relayed via the Telstar satellite over the Atlantic ocean on 23 July 1962, although a test broadcast had taken place almost two weeks earlier on 11 July. The signals were received and broadcast in North American and European countries and watched by over
Astérix (satellite) Astérix (satellite) Astérix, the first French satellite, was launched on November 26, 1965 by a Diamant A rocket from the CIEES launch site at Hammaguir, French Algeria. With "Astérix", France became the sixth country to have an artificial satellite in orbit after the USSR ("Sputnik 1", 1957), the United States ("Explorer 1", 1958), the United Kingdom ("Ariel 1", 1962), Canada ("Alouette 1", 1962), and Italy ("San Marco 1", 1964), and the third to launch a satellite on its own (the UK, Canada and Italy's satellites were launched on American rockets). The satellite was originally designated A-1, as the French Army's