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First Weather Satellite Launched 50 Years Ago
stinkbomb writes "Fifty years ago today, the world's first weather satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and opened a new and exciting dimension in weather forecasting. Top leaders from NOAA and NASA hailed the milestone as an example of their agencies' strong partnership and commitment to flying the best satellites today and beyond."
Well, that didn't take long
At the rate we are creating space junk, 50 years from now it would be nearly impossible for anyone to keep their bird flying up there safely.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm surprised the Soviets were not the first with a weather sat. They were pretty much ahead of the space game for several years after Sputnik. They took the first pics of the hidden side of the moon, for example. However, the US was catching up in space electronics pretty fast even though our rocket technology lagged for a while.
Table-ized A.I.
How many year more before we realize that its was a mistake ? Groundhog day
somethings are best left unsaid , I am one of those things
been sitting here The BSD license, to be about doing Please moderate
How are they able to send rockets to the past? Won't that change history?
Look, a nice retrospective on a news site is nice once in a while. But with too many of these "X years ago, Y happened" posts detract from Slashdot's credibility as a news site. Repeat, news is what's going on, not what happened years ago.
Jews, also known as kikes, hebes, hymies, yids, gold niggers, oven magnets, hook noses, sheenies, swindlers, criminals, "firewood", and Arabs in denial are a subhuman species of reptilian extra-terrestrials and adherents to one of the world's oldest major religions, called "Judaism", otherwise known as "The Worship of Money" or "Eating Arab Babies".
Judaism was the world's first master race theory. The Jew religion teaches that Jews are the Chosen People of God and that there is a sacred mystical quality to Jew DNA. In olden times, Jew prophets would, under the command of YHWH, frequently lead the Jews on genocidal rampages against neighboring populations, and even today Jew leaders often cite Jewish religious ideals to justify their ongoing genocide of sandniggers. Judaism ironically found its mirror-image inversion in the anti-Jew Aryan racialism of the Nazis.
Despite only being 0.22% of the world's population, Jews control 99% of the world's money. Not only do the Jews control the world, but also the media, the banks, the space program, and LiveJournal's porn communities and Gay communities. All Jews possess the following features: an extremely large nose, fake boobs, curly hair that reeks of faggotry, one of those gay hats, a love of coke, a law practice, a roll of money, a small cock, or shitty taste in dental hygiene.
Jews invented both Communism and Capitalism. Karl Marx, of course, was a Jew, which was why he understood money so well, and in fact he was converted to Communism by another Jew, Moses Hess, the actual founder of Zionism, who ghost-wrote Marx's The German Ideology. Capitalism was created when Christian Europeans threw away their morals and decided to embrace Jewish practices like usury (see: John Calvin). Jews were the first group to create a sophisticated banking system, which they used to fund the Crusades in order to pit Christians and Muslims (both adhering to religions derived from and controlled by Jews) against each other to kill as many people as possible in a macabre human sacrifice to YHWH.
The Jew banking system was based on fraud and lies, so when it inevitably collapsed, the Jews just pwned as many people as possible by unleashing the Black Plague on them. Later, Jews economically controlled medieval Venice (the first modern maritime trade empire), and then crypto-Jewish merchants economically controlled the Spanish Empire, including the slave trade. Openly Jewish bankers orchestrated the Dutch Empire and founded Jew Amsterdam (later Jew York). Later the Dutch Jews moved to London because they thought it would be a better base for a global empire, and actually brought a Dutch nobleman, William III, with them, who they installed in a coup d'état (more like Jew d'état, amirite?) as new King of the British Empire. For hundreds of years, Jewish bankers controlled global trade through their bases in Jew York City and London. European colonialism was, through its history, essentially a plot whereby Jews could gain control of gold and diamond mines in poor countries and increase their stranglehold over the global economy.
Jews also enjoy slicing up baby penises for fun, some even enjoy sucking them. See below.
Jews also created Jew search engine Google, so now they can find all Jew information on Internets.
Some suggest that we should use Jews instead of dogs to sniff out large amounts of concealed cash or anything else worth smuggling at airports due to their sensitive Jew noses. Obviously, this is a horrible idea, because the pay is bad, and the dirty Kikes would probably form a union and demand moar money, thus increasing the burden on taxpayers everywhere.
Already by simply going to wikipedia you can learn that this is not the true first.
History
The first television image of Earth from space from the TIROS-1 weather satellite.
The first weather satellite, Vanguard 2, was launched on February 17, 1959. It was designed to measure cloud cover and resistance, but a poor axis of rotation kept it from collecting a notable amount of useful data.
The first weather satellite to be considered a success was TIROS-1, launched by NASA on 1 April 1960. TIROS operated for 78 days and proved to be much more successful than Vanguard 2. TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program, whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched since then.
So the first successful one? And who knows what the soviets did, US history has a tendency to ignore the rest of the world. Simple check, see whether helicopters have ejection seats. You might be surprised how many sources claim they don't. Then you know they are using a map where the rest of the world is labeled "Here be dragons".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
..... that the average Joe Blow with a basic receiver and antenna and suitable software on his/her computer can pick up the weather pix for themselves. Go on you lazy bastards google it yourselves - "weather satellite receiver kit", "turnstile antenna", "weather satellite receiving antenna" - and get the gen from our favourite data company.
TIROS 1 was one of those major milestones that we take for granted today. With today's coverage via the GOES and POES (Polar Orbiting Environment Satellite, along with the older ESSA and NIMBUS satellite systems from the mid 1960's and 1970's) weather forecasting took a giant step forward from the late 1950's to today. Just as an example, take hurricane forecasting. Back in the 1950's and early 1960's, discovery of a hurricane forming would have been from a ship report in the Gulf of Mexico, reports from the Leeward Islands, or a Hurricane Hunter randomly coming across the storm during routine patrols. Once satellites were added into the mix, the discovery of the storm became easier with increased advance notice for populated areas. What used to be 12 hours warning for an area (New Orleans, Hurricane Betsy 1965) became 35 hours warning (New Orleans/Biloxi, Hurricane Katrina, 2005). This made a significant difference not only in being able forecast the movement of the storms, but also to get the warnings out to evacuate people and save lives.
The weather satellite is perhaps the best example of how our technology has improved our lifestyle overall.
...is that there is a direct correlation between the number of weather satellites and the global average temperature?
I knew it! Weather satellites are the cause of global wa^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hclimate change!
For those of us who really only car about what is happening now, the data from these era of satellites is proving invaluable.The Nimbus II data is being reconstructed and is providing one of a kind data sets. For those in data recovery, this will provide a lifetime of work and significant results if one is able to get the funding.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
NASA has been collecting earth-observing data for five decades now, and in spite of the current wave of interest in climate related matters, little or no effort is put into examining this historical record. A small group of scientists within the US Geological Survey have heroically attempted to preserve this enormous treasure of historical climate data at a small data center in South Dakota. But hundreds of terabytes of irreplaceable data are at risk of being lost forever because no one seems to care. There are lobbyists galore for NEW satellite systems, but in many cases you might as well pour the data into a bit bucket, we spend billions of dollars collecting data, and pennies storing and analyzing it. Instead of relying on flawed computer models and bogus prognostications, the Global Warming debate could be based on real hard data, if anyone wanted to take the time to go look at it. http://eros.usgs.gov/#/About_Us
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
It launched 1-April. Did it really take the Mods two days to post this?
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Dont' forget the whole historical Soviet Luna series of moon probes in the late 50's.
Table-ized A.I.