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LET’S FIND

OUT!

Nimbus, Latin for “rain cloud,” revolutionized how we study Earth’s weather systems, environment, and atmosphere. Seven Nimbus satellites, launched in 1964, observed the Earth for 30 years. The Nimbus satellites provided some of the first consistently global measurements of oceanic plant life and the ozone layer, as well as improved long-term weather forecasts, demonstrated search-and-rescue technology, and provided the first images of hurricanes taken from space.
Its contributions were related to:
Ozone layer
Sea ice
Global positioning system
Nuclear power
Radiation Budget
Forecasting the weather

NIMBUS

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•NASA's first experiment to see if satellites could be useful for Earth science was the TIROS Program. Satellite observations' efficacy was still a mystery at the time. The TIROS Program also tested a variety of spacecraft design issues because satellites were a new technology: operational parameters, data, and instruments. The TIROS-1 Program prioritized the creation of a meteorological satellite information system as its top priority. The objective was to enhance satellite applications for Earth-bound decisions like "Should we evacuate the coast because of the hurricane?" .The most promising use of space-based observations was weather forecasting. Weather forecasting was deemed the most promising application of space-based observations.

•Missions

•The satellite was carried into orbit by a Thor Able II rocket on April 1, 1960, at 11:40:09 UTC, and continued to function normally until June 15, 1960, when an electrical power failure prevented further useful TV transmission.

•TIROS 1 took 2 1/2 months to complete and returned 23,000 photographs of the Earth, 19,000 of which could be used for weather analysis. Large-scale cloud patterns in their entirety were visible for the first time, allowing for the identification of storm regions. The satellite tracked the disintegration of a large cyclonic mass off the coast of Bermuda for four days, providing the first long-term observations of a storm from embitters 1 also provided data on smaller scale structures like jet streams and tornadoes, and the results from the satellite added to and improved on the ground-based findings.

As of November 2020 it was on orbit

TIROS-1

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•The station's current instruments are not the first of their kind. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) is a third iteration of an instrument designed to complement long-term ground-based observations by long-term monitoring of carbon dioxide distributions in the atmosphere around the world. It monitors changes in the carbon cycle linked to human activity and provides insights into regional carbon sources and sinks.

•OCO-3, along with GEDI and ECOSTRESS, enhances our understanding of terrestrial ecosystems.OCO-3's path aboard the station provides a denser data set for areas with significant carbon fluxes, including Earth's most biologically diverse regions like the Amazon rainforest, whereas OCO-2 followed a polar orbit.

•The orbit also makes it possible to take measurements at different times of the day, which is especially helpful for ECOSTRESS and OCO-3 because plants' contributions to the carbon cycle change depending on the time of day because of changes in the sun, temperature, and availability of water.

OCO-3

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ECOSTRESS

•The human crew came in especially handy for the Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECO STRESS) instrument, which records the temperature of plants on Earth’s surface by measuring the heat they give off. In order for the instrument to transmit its data to the station, Wi-Fi modules had to be installed by astronauts during a spacewalk.

•ECOSTRESS has since shed new light on the connection between plant temperatures and water consumption. It can pinpoint plant stress to a single farmer's field, where water management and intervention may still be able to save crops.

•Based on the instrument's frequent and high-resolution temperature measurements, principal investigator Simon Hook claims that scientists have only begun to scratch the surface of the instrument's potential applications. The data on temperature can be used to watch for wildfires, droughts, volcanoes, heat waves, and even heat patterns in urban areas.

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•Meteorology research, severe storm tracking, and weather forecasting are all supported by the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service division of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The system's spacecraft and ground-based components collaborate to provide a continuous supply of environmental data. The GOES system is used by the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Meteorological Service of Canada for their North American weather monitoring and forecasting operations. The data are used by scientists to learn more about the dynamics of land, atmosphere, ocean, and climate.
Since SMS-1's launch in 1974, geosynchronous equatorial satellites have been an essential part of U.S. weather monitoring and forecasting.
•The GOES spacecraft continuously observes the continental United States, the Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans, Central America, South America, and southern Canada. It is designed to operate in a geostationary orbit 35,790 kilometers (22,240 miles) above the Earth. The body-stabilized, three-axis design lets the sensors "stare" at the Earth, making it easier to take pictures of clouds, keep an eye on the surface temperature and water vapor fields, and listen to the atmosphere for its vertical thermal and vapor structures. It is possible to follow the development of atmospheric phenomena, ensuring coverage of meteorological events like tropical cyclones and severe local storms in real-time. Hurricanes Hugo (1989) and Andrew (1992) demonstrated the significance of this capability.

GOES

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•The Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) was a group of polar-orbiting weather satellites funded by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The goal of the POES constellation was to improve the precision and accuracy of weather analysis and forecasting. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) provided the spacecraft, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center was in charge of making, putting together, and testing the TIROS satellites that NASA provided. Television Infrared Observation Satellite-N (TIROS-N) was the first polar-orbiting weather satellite to be launched as part of the POES constellation on October 13, 1978. On February 6, 2009, the final spacecraft, NOAA-19 (NOAA-N Prime), was launched. To ensure data continuity, the EUMETSAT-operated MetOp satellite provided by ESA makes use of POES-heritage instruments. The POES Program's successor is the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1, now NOAA-20), which was launched on November 18, 2017.