All language subtitles for What.on.Earth.S10E09.1080p.DSCP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-BTN_track3_[eng]

NARRATOR:
They're watching you.

More than 5,000 satellites
circle the Earth.

Every day, they uncover new,

mysterious phenomena
that defy explanation.

Revealed from space,

the ghost towns of
the twilight zone.

It's like the inhabitants
just vanished.

Death stalks America's suburbs.

WALTERS:
I've got bad news for you.

There are hundreds of places
like this all over the U.S.

NARRATOR: And the atomic
ice worm.

RUBEN: Humans have done
some pretty weird things.

This is right up there.

NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena,
mysteries from space.

What on Earth are they?

[theme music playing]

NARRATOR:
June 6th, 2018.

An orbiting
satellite passes

over the Eastern European
country of Belarus

and captures
something disturbing.

HORTON: This image of a town
is really weird,

because it looks as if
nobody's living there.

It's just been left
for nature to reclaim it.

When we zoom out, we can see
that it's not just this town,

but there are abandoned towns
all around it.

Whatever affected this place,
it was absolutely immense.

NARRATOR: A mystery event
has forced vast

numbers of people
to flee their homes.

Something catastrophic
seems to have happened here.

There's not a sign
of human life anywhere.

It's like the inhabitants
just vanished.

NARRATOR: Drawn by
the mystery ghost towns,

a team of Dutch
urban explorers

is trekking through Belarus
to investigate.

To reach the settlements,
they must navigate

a restricted area patrolled
by guards and beasts.

This whole area has a pretty
strong military presence.

Obviously, the authorities are
very keen to make sure that

people can't find out what's
going on inside this area.

NARRATOR:
Belarus has a dark history,

one that could explain
the presence

of military personnel
around the ghost towns.

HORTON: Belarus was taken
over by the Red Army in 1919

at the end of
the First World War

and remained
a key republic in

the Soviet Union until 1990.

During the Soviet era,

Belarus became kind of
a testing ground for lots of

Soviet weapons.

SZULGIT: We know that
the Soviets did some terrible

experiments with biological
weapons in some

of their satellite states, and
they weren't afraid to test

these on live subjects.

NARRATOR: As the team navigates
their way towards

the ghost towns,
death hangs in the air.

[gagging noise]

NARRATOR: The scale of what
happened here soon becomes

all too apparent.

SZULGIT: We can see by
the infrastructure

that this was a highly
populated area.

There were thousands
of people living here.

LEVINE: From the satellite,
it looks eerie.

But when you actually get in
amongst these buildings,

it takes on a kind of
post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

HORTON: I can't see any physical
damage to these buildings.

So one explanation
is that the whole

area has been contaminated
by biological agents.

NARRATOR: One of
the buildings yields more

possible evidence of Soviet
military activity.

We can see tributes

to Lenin everywhere and other
Soviet propaganda.

It's absolutely surreal.

NARRATOR:
It's clear that the young were

also among the many
casualties here.

The presence of gas masks on

the desks of schoolchildren is
especially troubling.

What's really creepy is
the kids were trained to use

gas masks,
but they fled so quickly

that they left
their masks behind.

NARRATOR: As the team
explores more buildings,

they discover that the people
here were indeed exposed to

lethal aerial toxins,

but not ones created
by Soviet weapons tests.

This postcard is very
easily overlooked.

It's just a scrap of paper
with some scrawling on it.

But actually, it becomes
very, very significant

if you look at the date.

HORTON: This date is highly
significant, because

it's shortly before

the meltdown of
the Chernobyl nuclear plant.

NARRATOR:
The towns in the image

and the thousands
who lived there

are the forgotten casualties
of the most catastrophic

nuclear disaster in history.

This satellite image
shows sort of

a lost chapter in the history
of Chernobyl.

NARRATOR: That history begins
in the early hours of

April 26, 1986,

when engineers begin a safety

test on Chernobyl's
Reactor No. 4.

After a drop in power,
it becomes unstable,

resulting in
a cataclysmic explosion.

[alarm sounding]

The explosion is
so massive that it blows

the 1,000-ton lid off of
the reactor.

That's the equivalent of
three 747 jets.

The ensuing fire
burned for 10 days.

So this hot plume
of radioactive smoke

was spreading across
the globe.

NARRATOR: The blast releases
a cloud filled with

190 tons of radioactive
material into the atmosphere.

What happened next has long
remained shrouded in secrecy.

It is a story of murderous,
state-sanctioned coverups

that continue to claim
innocent lives.

To this day, we still don't
know the number of people

who died in Belarus from
the Chernobyl accident.

Because of the secrecy, the
consequences of the disaster

are not over now,

but are still present
35 years later.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the ghost
town's terrible secret.

There are reports of people
coughing up parts of their lung.

NARRATOR: And Rome's
lost mega structure.

This is an astonishing feat
of engineering.

NARRATOR: Dozens of ghost towns
revealed from space

have drawn Dutch
urban explorers

to a restricted area
of Belarus.

NARRATOR: They have
discovered evidence of

tens of thousands of
ruined lives,

secret victims of the horrors
of Chernobyl.

The Ukraine side of
the Chernobyl story

has been well told,

but the Belarus
part of that story

remains shrouded in secrecy.

NARRATOR: In the hours following
the Chernobyl explosion,

the Kremlin learns that
a massive radioactive cloud is

moving towards Belarus.

Chernobyl is only about
a dozen miles

from the Belarus border.

And because of
the weather conditions,

a lot of the radiation was
carried into Belarus.

NARRATOR: In an attempt to stop
the cloud from reaching Moscow,

the authorities launch
an audacious, murderous plan.

Military planes are dispatched
to drop shells laden

with silver iodide into
the skies above Belarus.

This so-called cloud seeding
creates a rainstorm, which pulls

the radioactive dust from
the air and down

onto the ghost towns.

It's been estimated that
around 70 perfect of

the fallout from Chernobyl
actually landed in Belarus.

A quarter of the country
became heavily contaminated.

A fifth of
all agricultural lands

were left completely unusable.

NARRATOR: When the western
world learns of the disaster,

the government finally orders
the evacuation of hundreds of

square miles of
southern Belarus.

Almost overnight,

half a million people leave
their homes,

creating an 800-square-mile
Cold War time capsule.

MORGAN: This footage is
emotional, because people

created lives there

and it's evidence of lives
that were shattered

as a result of
the Chernobyl accident.

NARRATOR: Those who flee have
been exposed to 90 times

the amount of radiation
released by the Hiroshima

nuclear bomb.

And as they flee,
they begin to die.

LEVINE: Their hair started
to fall out.

Their skin turned red as
though they had very

bad sunburn.

[coughing]

SZULGIT: There are reports of
people coughing up blood

or even parts of
their lung.

That's how severe
this radiation can be.

NARRATOR: Following
the disaster, cancer rates in

Belarus increase
by more than 20 fold.

And birth defects rise
by 250 percent.

SZULGIT: The high-energy
radiation from Chernobyl

can pass right through
a person's body,

knocking holes in all of their
DNA and their cells along

the way, leading to tissue
destruction throughout.

NARRATOR: The exact death toll
in Belarus remains unclear,

but it's believed to be
in the tens of thousands.

And its government
continues to perpetuate

the deadly lies and coverups
surrounding the disaster.

Belarus is the last
dictatorship in Europe.

Belarus has been governed
by President Lukashenko

since 1994.

NARRATOR: Alexander Lukashenko
rose to power soon

after the collapse of
the Soviet Union.

He rules his people
through terror,

deploying death squads
and silencing opposition.

SZULGIT: Lukashenko is
clearly dangerous.

He ordered the hijacking of
an airliner

in May of 2021
to arrest a journalist.

MORGAN: He represents
continuation of the old

world of the former
Soviet Union.

He is behaving as if
the Cold War never ended.

NARRATOR: In 2004, Lukashenko
declares that many of

the contaminated zones
close to the ghost towns

are fit for human habitation.

Today, some two
million people,

including 800,000 children,
live in areas with radiation

levels 1,500 times higher than

that found at atomic
test sites.

Radiation is one of those
insidious things that leaves

no physical trace but lurks

there, hidden in the earth
and landscape.

Many of the people
in this region have no

other choice but to eat local
fruits and vegetables.

And of course, these can be

contaminated with
the radioactive fallout

from Chernobyl.

NARRATOR:
In this part of the world,

the Chernobyl disaster is far
from over, and its specter of

death is still
visible from space.

HORTON: The terrifying thing is,
with Lukashenko in charge,

what other terrible secrets
lie hidden in Belarus?

NARRATOR: Coming up, America's
secret starvation experiment.

They found that
the physiological side effects

are devastating.

NARRATOR: And terror
rises from the ice.

CAVELL: We've got
something big, and it

doesn't look to be
a natural occurrence.

NARRATOR: July 2019.

Eyes in the sky scan
a suburban neighborhood

in Minneapolis.

WALTERS: You've got lakefront
homes with jetties,

tree-lined avenues,
and then in the middle of it,

You've got what looks like

a pretty nasty chunk of
brutalist architecture.

NARRATOR: The crumbling
secure facility covers

around 2,500 acres.

JANULIS:
In the middle,

we have these square,
regimented-looking objects.

They're in a grid,
like a checkerboard.

MORAN: This is
a really strange ray of squares,

and there's some
structure within each one.

NARRATOR: Local historical
records offer a clue to

the purpose of the compound's
cell-like structures.

In the mid '40s,

the university ran this
research experiment in

which they looked at
the impacts of starvation.

Is it possible that this area
has something to do with

the Minnesota starvation
experiments?

NARRATOR:
In November 1944,

government-backed
scientists in Minneapolis

round up 36 conscientious
objectors and subject them to

systematic starvation.

They wanted to see how humans
became obsessed with food

and what actions they would
take in order to get food.

There was a good reason
behind this almost

preposterous experiment,

which was that World War II
had really ravaged Europe,

and there were countless people

living on the verge
of starvation.

NARRATOR: Over the course
of World War II,

famine claims around
20 million lives, and some

prisoners of war must survive
on just 600 calories a day.

To replicate these horrors,

researchers cut subjects' food
intake in half and force them

to follow strict
exercise regimens.

This would have been not much
of a problem if it was only

a few weeks --
most people can handle that.

But this went on
for six months.

NARRATOR:
As the experiment progresses,

the subjects displayed
dramatic declines in physical

and mental abilities.

Some resort
to eating pencils.

The psychological effects
were far worse

than they ever expected.

FANARA: The men ended up
with vivid dreams,

nightmares of cannibalism.

Are we looking at housing,
specifically for this study?

NARRATOR: Military journalist
Carlo Munoz confirms that

the compound did play a role
in World War II,

but in a very different way.

What we're actually looking at
here is some

of the remnants of the Twin
Cities Ammunition Plant.

This facility was really

a powerhouse, providing
the ammunition for U.S. troops

fighting in World War II.

NARRATOR: During the war,
the U.S. produces

11 million tons of artillery,
equivalent in weight

to 30 Empire State Buildings.

It also churns out over 40
billion rounds of ammunition,

enough to take 10 shots at
every person on Earth

at that time.

The 26,000 workers of the Twin
Cities Ammunition Plant play

a pivotal role in this
conveyor belt of carnage.

The ammunitions they produced
here ran the gamut

from bullets, rifles,

and armor-piercing,

all the way
to incendiary rounds.

This is a really key kind of
military industrial

complex that's part of
the Second World War effort

in the fight against Hitler
and Japan.

NARRATOR: On average,
it takes 45,000 bullets

to kill a single
enemy combatant.

Yet such is the scale of
production at the Twin Cities

Ammo Plant that,
by the end of the war,

millions of rounds
remain unused.

So what these squares are,
are chambers, they're ammo dumps

where you've got vast amounts
of ammunition being stored.

These protective walls were
designed to keep any potential

explosion enclosed
and from spreading across

the entire facility.

NARRATOR: In the decades
following, World War II,

the Twin Cities plant produces
ammunition for the wars in

Korea and Vietnam,

wars that claim
over eight million lives.

But the bullet factory
also brings

death to the suburbs
of Minneapolis.

The thing about producing
ammunition is it creates a lot

of really toxic byproducts,

and a lot of these chemicals
end up seeping into the ground

and into the groundwater.

WALTERS: You've got cyanide,
you've got hydrocarbons.

You've got God knows what
leaching out

of this plant into the
water supply

in what should be a really
nice unpolluted area.

NARRATOR: For decades,

the factory disposes of huge
amounts of carcinogenic

chemicals by dumping,

burying, or burning them
on site.

It wasn't just one or two burn
pits on the facility.

There were thousands of these
fires just smoldering

and releasing these toxic
chemicals into the atmosphere.

You look at the Twin Cities
plant, and you go,

"Well, I'll be delighted
to hear

that's the only one like it
in America."

But I've got bad news for you.

There are hundreds of places
like this all over the U.S.

NARRATOR: Across the country,
munitions disposal

has contaminated more than
40 million acres of soil,

an area bigger than Florida.

At the site in the image,
and elsewhere in the U.S.,

the deadly legacy of
World War II lives on.

Who knows what dangers
lie in hundreds

of sites like this across
the United States,

and what costs American people
will have to

pay with their health
and perhaps their lives.

NARRATOR: Coming up,
revenge of the ice worm.

RUBEN: What could possibly be
lurking under the surface?

And is this something
that humans made?

NARRATOR: And the island that
changed history.

This is where it all begins.

NARRATOR:
January 31st, 2017.

NASA scientists
take to the skies

over Greenland as
part of Operation Ice Bridge,

humankind's largest ever
polar survey.

As radar beams penetrate

remote tundra in
the northwest of the country,

the team discovers
something unexpected.

We can see the various layers
of snow and ice that seem

very smooth and uniform up
until there's an anomaly in

the Greenland ice.

We've got something big,
and it

doesn't look to be
a natural occurrence.

NARRATOR: The data suggests
the mystery object is

metallic and could be
hundreds of feet long.

RUBEN: What could possibly be
lurking 100 feet

under the surface of
the ice?

And is this something that
humans made?

Whatever is out here was
meant to be hidden.

It was meant to be buried.

So it suggests
something military.

NARRATOR:
Analysts cross-reference

the image coordinates with
declassified records.

The anomaly it transpires,
is all that remains of one

of the most outlandish
projects ever devised

by the U.S. government.

RUBEN: The idea is almost
absurdly grandiose.

Humans have done some pretty
weird things.

This is right up there.

NARRATOR: The audacious scheme
has its origins

in the late 1950s,
when the U.S.

turns to Greenland to give it
the edge in the battle for

nuclear dominance.

As the Cold War heats up,

the competition is on to be
able to achieve

a first strike status.

The U.S. was constantly
looking for

novel ways to hide
nuclear weapons.

CAVELL: Greenland was gonna be
the perfect place,

because it was in striking
distance of Moscow.

NARRATOR: The U.S. is aware
that soviet spy planes

can identify and target
stationary missile silos.

Its solution is to turn
Greenland's Ice Sheet

into a giant game of atomic
whack-a-mole.

KOUROUNIS: What they came up
with was Project Ice Worm,

and the plan was to build
a series of

interconnected tunnels

within the Greenland Ice Sheet
to store and launch

nuclear missiles.

MORGAN: You would have
a nuclear arsenal,

and then you continually
moved it.

This would keep the enemy
guessing whether or not

there would actually be
a missile in it.

NARRATOR:
Project Ice Worm's

blueprints called for
2,500 miles of tunnels,

allowing nuclear missiles

to be shuttled between 2,000
subterranean launch silos.

This represents an area about

the size of the state of
New York.

This plan is massive.

One small fact
about Greenland is that

the United States
does not own it.

Greenland belongs to Denmark.

And so the U.S. had to be
a little bit deceptive.

KOUROUNIS: So in 1959, the U.S.
announces the construction of

Camp Century,

which is to be this elaborate
scientific research base

built to study
the Greenland Ice Sheet.

NARRATOR: As a cover
for Project Ice Worm,

construction of Camp Century
begins in June

of the same year.

Over the following months,

engineers carve out almost two
miles of tunnels and install

homes for 200 personnel.

KOUROUNIS:
This was an amazing facility.

There were shops, a church,

even a barbershop,
all underneath the ice.

CAVELL: They then had to deal
with a source of power.

The best solution,
it was believed, was

to bring in a portable
nuclear reactor.

NARRATOR:
While the project progresses,

the military goes to
extraordinary lengths to hide

the truth from
the Danish government.

MORGAN: They even sent Boy
Scouts to keep diaries on what

their life was like when they
stayed under the Ice Sheet.

ANNOUNCER: Two young Boy Scouts
from Neodesha, Kansas,

earned their keep as junior
scientific aides in

Camp Century.

And these Boy Scouts didn't
understand that they were

part of the establishment

of a vast network
of nuclear missile

launch platforms.

NARRATOR: But four years into
Project Ice Worm,

Camp Century goes
into meltdown.

The scientists didn't take
into account

the plasticity of the ice

and how much it would actually
move and shift over time.

You had tunnels that were
cracking and collapsing,

and so what it proved
overall was that

this grand ambition of
establishing a nuclear launch

site was all silly
daydreaming.

NARRATOR:
In 1967,

the U.S. abandons Camp Century,
and it becomes enveloped

in ice.

But today,
as Greenland thaws,

Ice Worm is threatening to
rise from its frozen tomb.

If this were to happen,
it would

be an absolute disaster for
the U.S. military.

There's six million
gallons of wastewater generated

from the camp that are still
there, locked in the ice,

not to mention radioactive
waste from the nuclear

generator that powered
the place.

NARRATOR: In this part
of Greenland,

the Cold War could yet
turn hot.

Scientists locked in a race
against time to find a way to

keep this buried city and
everything within it

locked within the ice.

RUBEN: Honestly,
Project Ice worm is one of

the most insane projects
I've ever heard of.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the mystery
ancient mega structure.

BELLINGER: It's hard to wrap
your head around

the awesome effort required to
craft something like this.

NARRATOR: And heist on
Nazi headquarters.

It is an almost perfect
stealth commando operation.

NARRATOR:
January 1st, 2020.

A satellite
flies over the west coast

of Italy and captures
a bizarre structure

in the landscape.

WALTERS: It looks like a massive
purpose-built lake.

But the first thing that
stands out here is the shape.

It looks like somebody
just took

a cookie cutter and stamped
a perfect hexagon.

NARRATOR: The weird,
hexagonal lake

covers around 100 acres.

It's surrounded by fields,
and this hexagon takes

up the size of, like,
three or four.

So this thing is huge.

The lake sits next to
the River Tiber,

gateway to Rome,

capital of the most powerful
empire of antiquity.

And historical
documents reveal

it is a relic of one
of its most

extraordinary achievements.

It's hard to wrap your head
around the complexity

and the awesome
effort required

to craft something like this.

NARRATOR:
The structure's story begins

soon after the birth of Christ,

when the Roman Empire enters
a period of massive expansion.

♪

Rome's population
soon reaches one million,

a figure that will not be
surpassed for 1,800 years.

Rome is becoming this huge,

what we today call kind of
a megalopolis.

It's a mega city.

JANULIS: Rome is undergoing
great political

and economic change.

Massive amounts of wealth are
suddenly coming into the empire,

and the emperors are ruling
as gods.

NARRATOR: But among Rome's
masses, discontent is spreading.

The city's growth has created
food shortages,

leading to riots.

This burgeoning population
needs huge quantities of food

to sustain it,
particularly grain.

This grain has to be brought
by ship, a lot of it from Egypt.

NARRATOR: To feed Rome,

the emperor needs to bring in

1,000 ships filled
with grain every month.

But the city's waterways can't
handle that kind of traffic.

So you've got Emperor Claudius,
and he's scratching his head.

He's got a problem,
because his port

of Ostia is simply
too small for Rome.

So what's he gonna do?

To solve this problem,

Emperor Claudius commissions
an artificial port,

the Port of Portus.

NARRATOR: For
Emperor Claudius, Portus is

an opportunity to both

pacify his restless citizens
and create a lasting monument

in honor of his rule.

These emperors had egos,
and they had agendas,

and they expressed them
architecturally.

Caesar built
the Teatro Marcello.

Hadrian built a wall
and the Pantheon

and Flavian built the greatest
coliseum known to humanity.

NARRATOR: Emperor Claudius
chooses the now landlocked area

to the west of the lake
for his new port.

He orders the construction
of an artificial

harbor big enough to
accommodate fleets of ships,

each laden with 500 tons
of Egyptian grain.

BELLINGER: This port is on
such a large scale,

it's actually almost hard to
picture it,

but it helps to imagine that
it could hold over

300 ships at one time.

NARRATOR: Construction begins
in 46 A.D.

It takes almost
20 years to carve

out the 20-foot-deep,
500-acre basin.

You gotta remember,
you're not just building

a hole in the ground --
you're building cays,

temples, houses.

This is like a little city
in itself.

NARRATOR: But after a few years,
even this

colossal harbor can't sustain
the might of Rome.

As Rome's population got
even larger,

so it was necessary
to build a second harbor.

BELLINGER: This very distinctive
hexagonal shape

actually was applied to

the harbor under the Emperor
Trajan at around 100 A.D.

HUNT: Today, you can still see
the foundations of the giant

warehouses where the goods
that came out of the ships

were stored.

NARRATOR:
For the next 300 years,

the hexagon lake is the nexus
of Rome's trade

with its empire, a hub

connecting Europe
with Africa and Asia.

The ships coming in

were supplying Rome's growing
population with the food

it needed, but also with

luxury items, with slaves,
and even wild animals

that would have participated
in the games in the coliseum.

If you were standing along one
of the sides of this hexagonal

harbor in the year 100 A.D.,

could hear the roar of lions,

the howls of monkeys,
you could hear everything that

told you Rome is the center of
the world.

NARRATOR:
By the fifth century A.D.,

the Roman Empire is in
terminal decline,

and as the port silts up,
it is abandoned.

Today, only the strangely
shaped lake remains,

lone relic of one of
the greatest engineering

projects of the ancient world.

This is the high water mark,
the zenith of the Roman Empire.

NARRATOR: Coming up,
the $4.5 billion dollar gamble.

The world had seen nothing
like it before.

NARRATOR:
June 23rd, 2018.

As an orbiting
camera scans an island in

northwest France,

an echo from the past
emerges from the Earth.

What we see in this image is
a deserted island with a series

of concentric circles,

one within the other.

It's like a drop of water
has left

a ripple in the middle of
this island.

Whatever it is has been
abandoned for decades.

NARRATOR:
For military historians,

the crumbling structure's
location is significant.

This was a very strategically
important place

for the Nazis
in World War II.

And when we see circles
like this,

we immediately think of
something like

a radar installation.

NARRATOR:
During World War II,

the U.S. and its allies
launch around

four million bomber and
fighter attacks on Nazi-held

positions in Europe.

During each mission, they must
evade a 1,500-mile-long

line of coastal radar
installations that stretches

from France to Scandinavia.

It was bad news, because if
Allied aircraft wanted to fly

under the cover of darkness
toward occupied France,

they would have to fly through
a phalanx of these

radar stations.

NARRATOR: The German radar
wall means just

a third of Allied bombers
complete their missions.

This is why the Allies
ultimately

choose to do something
about it,

and what they do is called
Operation Biting.

Operation Biting was
this special

forces raid on German
radar installations.

NARRATOR: Operation Biting's
primary target is

a coastal radar station near
the structure

in the image.

Now, what this special forces

group does is land
on the coast.

They attack the radar
installation, and they bring

back some of its details
and its secrets.

HYMEL: It is an almost perfect
stealth commando operation.

The British have stolen
the key

that's gonna unlock
the secrets of German radar.

NARRATOR: The British figure out
that by dropping

reflective bits of aluminum,

they can disrupt German radar

and greatly increase
the number of successful

bombing missions.

MORGAN: One airplane loaded
full of chaff could

suddenly look like
50 airplanes in flight.

And so Operation Biting
paid off in

a very meaningful way during
World War II.

NARRATOR: Historical land
records confirm that the mystery

circles are the remains of
a ground station,

but one that played a role in

an even more important event
in 20th century history.

RUBEN: The archives tell us
that this was not

just any ground station.

This is actually part of
the birth of international

satellite transmissions.
-MORGAN: And as it turns out,

the satellite was
the grandfather of all of

the telecommunications
satellites

that we know
and use today.

NARRATOR: In 1938,
the first electronic TV sets

go on sale in the U.S.

Within 15 years,

they can be found in
20 million households

across the country.

As the market explodes,
broadcasters look to

the heavens for ways to reach
yet more viewers.

This was essentially the birth
of the idea that you can

communicate with someone on

the other side of the planet
by bouncing those signals off

of things we've put in the sky.

NARRATOR: One of the first
satellite transmissions

takes place in 1960,
when NASA

uses the Echo 1 spacecraft
to broadcast a speech by

President Eisenhower.

EISENHOWER: It is a great
personal satisfaction to

participate in this first
experiment in communications.

It was just a metal-covered
balloon called Echo 1,

but more commonly known as
the sata-loon.

It really was very primitive,
but it did allow radio

communications to go back
and forth

around the Earth.

NARRATOR: Despite
the success of Echo 1,

the ability to transmit images
from orbit remains elusive.

Then Telstar
came along and Telstar

is not just
a metal-covered balloon.

It's a legitimate satellite.

CAVELL: Telstar really is
a foundational piece

of equipment.

This is where it all begins.

NARRATOR: Telstar is to be
the world's first true

communications satellite

and will work by bouncing
a signal between

the U.S. and France.

[pinging noises]

Before the $4.5
billion dollar program

goes live,

engineers want to be sure it
works, and that's where

the circles in
the image fit in.

HYMEL: In the center
of that circle was

a 600-foot tower.

And that was used as sort of
a receiving

station, which would simulate
a satellite low on the horizon.

MORGAN: In other words,
the tower on the island

made it possible for them

to calibrate all of their
equipment so that when

the Telstar satellite
was launched,

they could receive the signal.

NARRATOR:
On July 10th, 1962,

a delta rocket launched from
Cape Canaveral carries

the 170-pound Telstar satellite
into orbit.

48 hours later,
it begins broadcasting

the first live images
from space.

MORGAN: It marked a major
and important milestone

in our history,
because we were

establishing what was
effectively the worldwide reach

of telecommunications.

Just a few weeks later,
President Kennedy is able to

beam an entire press conference
over to Europe.

And then other big
events are getting beamed

around the world,
like boxing matches.

And even more importantly,
Elvis Presley live from Hawaii.

MORGAN: We were watching
the absolute

cutting edge of human progress.

The world had seen nothing
like it before.

[pinging noises]

NARRATOR: After being
operational for six months,

the U.S. accidentally fries
Telstar's circuits

with radiation from a high
altitude nuclear test.

But six decades later,

its impact continues to
be felt

in almost every aspect of
our lives.

That satellite really brought
the world closer together,

and that spot in France
was part

of making the world smaller.