Courier 1B, the world's first active repeater communications satellite, was successfully launched October 4, 1960 at 17:45:00 GMT from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first Courier satellite in Project Courier, Courier 1A, was lost 2.5 minutes after lift-off on August 18, 1960. History As a Cold War initiative, Courier 1B was the 26th satellite launched by the US as opposed to the Soviet Union's six satellites since Sputnik I in 1957. Proposed by the US Army Signal Corps in September 1958, Courier 1B was a follow up to SCORE program launched December 18, 1958. SCORE "was the first step of an evolutionary program to develop communication satellite systems for use by the military services". The Project Courier was a joint program of the US Department of Defense (ARPA) along with the US Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Courier 1B would receive messages or photographs, store them, and then re-transmit them. Courier 1B was: An experimental system to demonstrate the feasibility of using satellites for providing a solution to global communications problems. It was designed to store teletype messages and transmit them at high speed while the satellite is in view of a ground station... orbiting Earth at . Spacecraft Courier 1B was built by the Western Development Labs (WDL) division of Philco, previously known as "Army Fort Monmouth Laboratories". Philco was bought by Ford Motor Company, becoming part of its Ford Aerospace division, which was acquired by Loral Corporation. WDL then became part of Space Systems/Loral division of Loral Space & Communications. IT&T provided ground support equipment and Radiation, Inc, Melbourne, Florida, made the large dish ground antennas. Sonotone Corporation, Elmsford, New York developed the on-board power system for the satellite. Courier 1B was a , diameter sphere, of this was the electronic equipment payload. It carried four 2-W microwave FM (1700-1800 MHz) transmitters and a 50-mW transistorized VHF beacon transmitter subsystem. It contained four solid-state receivers in the 1800-1900 MHz microwave band. Five tape recorders were used to store data for later playback. Four of these were digital with a total capacity of 13.2 Mb (4 minutes at 55 kbit/s) each. One was an analog recorder with a 4-minute capacity and a range of 300 to 50,000 Hz. Four whip antennas were mounted at 90° intervals along the equator of the sphere. It also held two microwave antennas, a transistorized telemetry generator, a VHF