Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 159
This was the first hurricane to be identified by a satellite before being observed by thenconventional
means.
Even before these successes, the usefulness of the TIROS satellites led to pressure to
transform the experimental project into an operational system. To address this issue,
NASA called together an interagency Panel on Operational Meteorological Satellites in
October 1960. Disagreements over the future of the program quickly appeared. The
Weather Bureau sought more control than NASA wanted to give up; it asked for complete
authority over the operational system, including launching, data retrieval, and final decisions
on the design of new operational satellites. [II-4]
The panel issued a compromise plan in April 1961 calling for a national operational
meteorological satellite system (based on a second-generation satellite already under
development by NASA) to be managed by the Weather Bureau. 19 This plan did not go as
far as the Weather Bureau had originally proposed; NASA would maintain control of
launch services and ground support and would develop and procure spacecraft under
contract to the Department of Commerce (of which the Weather Bureau was a part).
President Kennedy’s May 25, 1961, speech to Congress titled “Urgent National Needs,” in
which he urged funding a program to land an American on the Moon before the end of
the decade, also requested funds to put the weather satellite plan into operation. Congress
approved the funding Kennedy had requested, despite continuing controversy over what
would be the best division of responsibility between NASA and the Weather Bureau for
operating the system. 20
Meanwhile, NASA was working on the second-generation meteorological satellite,
Nimbus, as a prototype for the operational system. Nimbus was a more sophisticated
spacecraft than TIROS—stabilized so that it always pointed toward the Earth rather than
continuously rotating. It was to be launched into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit so that it
could collect data from the whole Earth at the same local time each day. The satellite
would carry not only more sophisticated television cameras, but also a high-resolution
infrared radiometer that used thermal infrared sensors to map temperature. (A simpler
experimental sensor of the same type had been carried on later TIROS flights.) Plans for
Nimbus also included a variety of more sophisticated sensors—most significantly, sounding
instruments providing data that could be used to determine temperatures at various
levels in the atmosphere. 21 These new instruments reflected the efforts of NASA scientists
to meet the continuing demand from research meteorologists for basic numerical data in
addition to cloud images. 22
While researchers wanted the more sophisticated data Nimbus would provide, the
Weather Bureau became concerned about its increasing cost and delays in launch. NASA
and the Weather Bureau also had differing perspectives on what decisions should be made
about the operational system and on which agency should make them. 23 This became a
19. U.S. National Coordinating Committee for Aviation Meteorology, Panel of Operational
Meteorological Satellites, Plan for a National Operational Meteorological Satellite System (Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1961).
20. These issues are discussed in “The National Meteorological Program,” preliminary staff report of
the Committee on Science and Astronautics, 87th Cong., 1st sess., July 13, 1961. For a discussion of the process
of approving the plan, see Science Policy Research Division, Congressional Research Service, United States
Civilian Space Programs: Volume II, Applications Satellites, report prepared for the Subcommittee on Space Science
and Applications, U.S. House of Representatives, 98th Cong., 1st sess., May 1983, pp. 198–99; Chapman, “A Case
Study,” pp. 107–27.
21. Chapman, “A Case Study,” p. 161.
22. Indeed, the Nimbus series continued through Nimbus 7 and provided the basic information needed
to develop later research satellite systems, including the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite and the Earth
Observing System. H.F. Eden, B.P. Elero, and J.N. Perkins, “Nimbus Satellites: Setting the Stage for Mission to
Planet Earth,” EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 74 (June 29, 1993): 281, 285.