Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

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OBSERVING THE EARTH FROM SPACE
Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a new organization established a few months earlier
and intended to centralize military (and, temporarily, civilian) space research under
tighter control by the secretary of defense. After another reconfiguration to take advantage
of a larger booster, ARPA changed the name of the project from Janus II to TIROS
(for Television Infrared Observation Satellite) and committed funds to final design and
construction for a planned launch in the summer of 1959. 13 The U.S. Signal Research and
Development Laboratory at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, managed a contract with RCA
for construction of the satellite.
The Civilian Program
NASA took over the TIROS project, upon its creation later in 1958, with the understanding
that the space agency would cooperate with the Weather Bureau. However, DOD
interest in weather satellite data continued, complicating the process of planning an operational
program. Later in the 1960s, the Air Force began developing a separate Defense
Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) to meet specific military needs for data to support
its operations. 14 Early satellites in the DMSP differed little from TIROS, but later satellites
in the program provided quantitative radiometric data designed specifically to
support DOD requirements. Civilian meteorological satellites continued to be used by
both civilian and military meteorologists; the eventual convergence of the two programs
is discussed in the next section.
In July 1958, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower had decided that all space programs
that were not clearly military should be transferred to the new civilian space agency,
the White House assigned TIROS to NASA. Arranging the actual transfer posed difficulties
because the program was so far along in its development, but a number of scientists
and engineers agreed to move from DOD to NASA along with the project, and NASA
arranged for the Weather Bureau to provide research support in meteorology. 15 A transfer
agreement was signed in April 1959. [II-3]
Despite the difficulties of the transfer, NASA launched the experimental TIROS I on
April 1, 1960—a spin-stabilized satellite carrying two television cameras. The results generated
so much excitement among meteorologists that NASA soon set up a system to
transfer the resulting cloud cover information onto standard weather maps and to send
them to weather stations and to the military services. 16 Although meteorologists found
satellite data difficult to integrate into the forecasting process, because their models
required data on temperature, pressure, and wind speed and direction, they found that
satellite images showed large-scale weather patterns so clearly that they were immediately
useful. 17 Satellites also demonstrated their value for storm warning. In September 1961, a
TIROS satellite helped track an extremely dangerous hurricane, Carla, bearing down on
the Gulf Coast. Warnings led to the evacuation of more than 350,000 people. 18 Also in
September 1961, a fully developed hurricane, Esther, was located through satellite images.
13. Ibid., pp. 36–54, 61–62.
14. In addition, the highly classified CORONA photoreconnaissance program was jointly managed by
the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency.
15. Chapman, “A Case Study,” pp. 60–64.
16. Janice Hill, Weather from Above: America’s Meteorological Satellites (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1991), pp. 9–16.
17. For a discussion of the resistance of meteorologists to the use of satellite data, see Margaret Eileen
Courain, “Technology Reconciliation in the Remote-Sensing Era of the United States Civilian Weather
Forecasting, 1957–1958,” Ph.D. Diss., Rutgers University, 1991.
18. Patrick Hughes, “Weather Satellites Come of Age,” Weatherwise 37 (April 1984): 68–75.