On Feb. 25, 1982, the Western Union company launched a communication satellite called Westar 4. Western Union was the first American telecommunications company to have a fleet of its own satellites.
Westar 4 was twice as big as the first three Westar satellites and had four times the communications capacity. It lifted off from Cape Canaveral on a Delta 3910 rocket at 7:04 p.m. Eastern Time and entered a geostationary orbit.
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For 10 years the satellite relayed voice, data, video and fax communications before it was replaced. While it is no longer operational, it is still orbiting the Earth today.
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