Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 157
would be of much benefit to meteorologists. An April 1951 RAND report titled “Inquiry
into the Feasibility of Weather Reconnaissance from a Satellite Vehicle” considered
whether the data meteorologists wanted could be derived from cloud images. [II-2] The
report stated the following:
It is obvious that in observing the weather through the “eye” of a high-altitude robot almost
all of the regular quantitative measurements usually associated with meteorology must fall by
the wayside. It is impossible to make more than an intelligent guess at the values of temperature,
pressure, humidity, and the remaining quantitative meteorological parameters. . . .
Clouds, being the objects most easily discernable [sic] from extremely high altitudes, become
the important item and must be utilized to the utmost in forming a synoptic picture. It is
apparent that from clouds alone it will be impossible to tell everything about the current synoptic
situation. Combined, however, with both theoretical knowledge and that gained
through experience, accurate cloud analysis can produce surprisingly good results. 8
Starting in 1947 with imagery taken from V-2 rockets fired at White Sands, New
Mexico, scientists sought to classify clouds and to deduce weather parameters from historical
data and cloud patterns. They judged their results to be quite successful, but they
argued that new approaches would be needed to make the best use of the data. For example,
they wanted a new method of classifying clouds, rather than the traditional classification
method based solely on appearance. 9
An analysis of similar images by the Naval Research Laboratory a few years later provided
more evidence of the value of weather-related observations from space. For example,
Otto Berg discovered that images taken by a Navy Aerobee rocket in October 1954
had shown a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico—a storm that then hit the United
States with no advance warning from weather stations. He argued that satellites would be
immediately useful for providing storm warnings. Berg suggested that “in the more distant
future, these techniques of rocket reconnaissance will be applied to investigation of other
meteorological phenomena.” 10
The first weather satellite project, TIROS, resulted not just from the perceived usefulness
of storm warnings but also from the existence of many different groups in the
Department of Defense (DOD) that wanted a hand in space. The Air Force sponsored a
number of studies to explore technology for reconnaissance satellites, leading eventually
to a development contract with Lockheed for what eventually became the Satellite Military
Observation System (SAMOS) reconnaissance satellite. The RCA Corporation, one of the
unsuccessful bidders, then approached the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) with a
proposal to develop a satellite with a television camera for either meteorology or surveillance.
11 The ABMA initiated Project Janus to test the television concept for the purpose of
reconnaissance, but in mid-April 1958, DOD assigned the satellite reconnaissance mission
exclusively to the Air Force. The ABMA then changed the mission of what had become
the Janus II project from reconnaissance to meteorology. 12
In May 1958, Janus II was transferred within DOD from the ABMA to the Advanced
8. S.M. Greenfield and W.W. Kellog, “Inquiry into the Feasibility of Weather Reconnaissance from a
Satellite Vehicle,” The RAND Corporation, R-365, August, 1960, p. 1; see Document II-2. This is the unclassified
version of RAND Report R-218, April 1951.
9. Ibid., p. 22.
10. Otto E. Berg, “High-Altitude Portrait of Storm Clouds,” Office of Naval Research Reviews, September
1955, Space Policy Institute Documentary History Collection, Washington, DC.
11. Richard LeRoy Chapman, “A Case Study of the U.S. Weather Satellite Program: The Interaction of
Science and Politics,” Ph.D. Diss., Syracuse University, 1967, pp. 20–24.
12. Ibid., pp. 30–33.