The first television picture sent from space by TIROS-1 showed the coast of Maine and Canada's Maritime Provinces.
Courtesy NASA __1960: __NASA launches the first weather satellite, TIROS-1, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
TIROS, for Television Infrared Observation Satellite, sent the very first TV images from space to the ground station at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The pictures clearly showed the New England coast and Canada's Maritime Provinces north to the St. Lawrence River. The photos were airlifted pronto to Washington, D.C., to be presented to President Eisenhower.
TIROS-1 was an aluminum-and-stainless-steel drum measuring 42 inches in diameter, 19 inches high and weighing 270 pounds. An array of 9,200 solar cells powered its two TV cameras: one high-res, one low-res. One antenna received control signals from ground stations, and another four transmitted TV images back to Earth. Two video recorders stored images when the satellite was out of range of ground stations.
The polar-orbiting craft was not constantly pointed at earth and could only operate in daylight, so coverage was not continuous. It functioned for just 78 days, but it sent back thousands of pictures of cloud patterns forming and moving across the face of the planet. And it proved the theory that satellites could effectively survey global weather from space.
The Environmental Science Services Administration (predecessor of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) launched more TIROS satellites with NASA in the next few years. But it wasn't until TIROS-9 in 1965 that the program achieved complete daily coverage of the entire sun-illuminated side of the planet.
April 1 has further import in the history of meteorology. It was this day in 1875 that Francis Galton (cousin of Charles Darwin) published the first newspaper weather map in The Times (London). Galton's chart of conditions in northwestern Europe on the previous day had virtually all the elements of a modern weather map: isobars (lines of equal atmospheric pressure), temperatures, wind speed and direction, and sky and sea conditions.
No foolin'.
Source: Various
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