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First Weather Satellite Launched 50 Years Ago

Posted by timothy on from the al-gore-was-riding-it-paul-bunyan-like dept.

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."

19 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Space Junk by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Space Junk by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

      New parachute-like devices are being proposed that create more drag for spent rockets and satellites so that they come down sooner:

      http://dvice.com/archives/2010/03/cubesail-parach.php

      It won't work for lost parts and collision debris, but it's a start.
           

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Space Junk by MartinSchou · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Build and deploy massive blocks of aerogel in orbit and use it to scoop up debris and lost parts. Making it burn up on re-entry might be a problem though.

    3. Re:Space Junk by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      That's what urban legend, the professionally panics, and those whose livelihoods depends on getting eyeballs on column ink (electrons?) would have you believe. As usual, the reality is far different. Launchers and spacecraft today are required to minimize debris production. Separation hardware is now retained rather than being jettisoned. Spent stages vent rather than being allowed to explode. Etc. Etc..
       
      Is the problem solved? No. Is progress being made? Yes, quite a bit. Statements like the one quoted above are just ill informed alarmism.
       
      PS to the guy who suggested aerogel: Unless you match velocities with the debris, all you'll have is aerogel with a hole in it. Once you've matched velocities, you could capture the debris in a brown paper bag and you won't need aerogel, which is only any good for capturing debris a small fraction of the size that causes the most worries. I wish the comment about aerogel would stop getting moderated up - it's like suggesting containing a nuclear explosion by wrapping the bomb in chewing gum wrappers.

  2. Not a Soviet first? by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Not a Soviet first? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Its harder to get good photographs of weather at high latitudes because you either have to do it from high altitude and an oblique angle, or from low altitude in a high inclination orbit. Doing it that way you get two passes at the most per day.

      Also, maybe they did have weather satellites but the data wasn't released to civilians because high altitude photography was considered secret.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    2. Re:Not a Soviet first? by Trepidity · · Score: 3, Informative

      They were a bit ahead early on, but not by that much. Here's an incomplete timeline of some firsts:

      October 1957: Sputnik 1, first satellite [USSR]
      November 1957: Sputnik 2, first space capsule capable of sustaining life (contained a dog) [USSR]
      January 1958: Explorer 1, first U.S. satellite, first to carry scientific instruments [USA]
      March 1958: Vanguard 1, first solar-powered satellite [USA]
      May 1958: Sputnik 3, first Soviet satellite to carry scientific instruments (but tape recorder failed, so collected no data) [USSR]
      December 1958: Project SCORE, first communications satellite [USA]
      February 1959: Vanguard 2, first weather satellite (though didn't collect much useful data) [USA]
      April 1960: TIROS-1, first successful weather satellite [USA]
      August 1960: Sputnik 5, first roundtrip of living animals (40 mice) in a capsule [USSR]
      April 1961: Vostok 1, first human in space [USSR]
      May 1961: Freedom 7, first American in space [USA]

      --
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    3. Re:Not a Soviet first? by bmo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "I'm surprised the Soviets were not the first with a weather sat."

      You don't know how close the space race really was.

      A weather sat with a better camera is a spy sat. We were heavily into that as soon as possible, earlier than the Soviets (1959 with Corona and the USSR with Zenit in 1962). A launch of a weather or science satellite also looks the same as a spy satellite. And indeed, the first launches of spy satellites were announced as "Discoverer" science missions.

      Interestingly, Yuri Gagarin's capsule was actually the first spy satellite hull. The Soviets sacrificed the first hull to get Yuri in the air, and the second one became the first Zenit spy sat. They were able to accomplish this because in the Soviet system, the whole thing went up and came back, camera and all, for reloading for film. Sending up a delicate (and heavy) camera and bringing it back in one piece is pretty similar to getting a human up and back. The tests with dogs like Laika and the rest were to ensure that they could get the cameras back in one piece just as well as getting a human back.

      The US Corona system didn't lend itself to dual use like the Zenit system did - it only ejected film packs to be returned by parachute and retrieved in mid air. There was no need to bring the whole apparatus back.

      Eisenhower was excoriated in the press for Sputnik, but declassified docs showed that he was already on the ball by the time the Soviets launched. Since he couldn't say anything about actual spy satellites, he couldn't fend off the press.

      Eisenhower also benefited from Sputnik dispelling the notion of "airspace" beyond the Earth's atmosphere - that national borders didn't extend to infinity.

      It's all interesting stuff.

      Weather sats were a side benefit to the whole cold-war spy business.

      --
      BMO

    4. Re:Not a Soviet first? by corbettw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Strategically, letting the Soviets go first was a good move. Can you imagine how Nikita "We will bury you" Khrushchev would've responded if the US had been first to launch a satellite? He would've banged his shoe at the UN some more and whined and complained about us invading their territory. But with the Soviets going first and us not complaining about Sputnik flying over our territory, the precedent was set that satellites could go anywhere. It might not have been Ike's plan all along, but it definitely worked out better for everyone in the long run.

      --
      God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
    5. Re:Not a Soviet first? by calidoscope · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Eisenhower was especially worried about the Soviets reaction to a launcher developed by von Braun's group - they could have had a bird in orbit in January 1956. Eisenhower ordered personnel at the Cape to make sure that there was no fourth stage on that launch.

      --
      A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
    6. Re:Not a Soviet first? by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Informative

      Its harder to get good photographs of weather at high latitudes because you either have to do it from high altitude and an oblique angle, or from low altitude in a high inclination orbit.

      You missed options three and four. You can also use a high inclination Molnyia orbit. (Which the Russians have used at various times.) You can also use a polar orbit (which most US birds use), which can get photos every couple of hours.
       
      So high latitude weather photography is really only difficult if you choose to make it so.

  3. Questionable "first" anyway by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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".

    --

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    1. Re:Questionable "first" anyway by calidoscope · · Score: 2, Informative
      You would be surprised how little it can cost to track satellites. Ever hear about the satellite tracking work done by an English school teacher and his students? They had both deduced that some Soviet sats were photo recon and that the Soviets had a new launch site.

      To be useful, a weather sat needs to download the data in near real-time and AFAIK there was no record of any Soviet bird doing that before Tiros.

      --
      A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
  4. Re:"News for Nerds"? by sortius_nod · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you don't like it, don't read the story.

    I find it interesting myself, I personally don't keep track of every milestone of science & technology waiting to celebrate the day when it hits 10, 20, 50, etc, years.

    Maybe you should start your own site that purely focus' on news.

  5. Re:"News for Nerds"? by bmo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, we all know how Scientific American's "50, 100, and 150 Years Ago" page detracts from the credibility of the magazine.

    Crikes.

    I put it to you that there are much less worthy articles on this site that actually do detract from Slashdot's credibility.

    --
    BMO

  6. what is really cool now is ... by thephydes · · Score: 4, Informative

    ..... 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.

  7. Weather Satellites are indispensabe now by VoiceOfSanity · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  8. So what you are saying... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...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!

  9. The great data repository by couch_warrior · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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

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