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Television Infrared Observation Satellite

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"TIROS" redirects here. For the Brazilian municipality, see Tiros.

Television InfraRed Observation Satellite
TIROS 6 satellite
ManufacturerRCA Astrospace
Lockheed Martin
Country of originUnited States
OperatorNASA
ApplicationsMeteorology
Specifications
BusTIROS
RegimeLow Earth orbit
Production
Launched45
Lost4

Television InfraRed Observation Satellite (TIROS) is a series of early weather satellites launched by the United States, beginning with TIROS-1 in 1960. TIROS was the first satellite that was capable of remote sensing of the Earth, enabling scientists to view the Earth from a new perspective: space.[1] The program, promoted by Harry Wexler, proved the usefulness of satellite weather observation, at a time when military reconnaissance satellites were secretly in development or use. TIROS demonstrated at that time that "the key to genius is often simplicity".[2] TIROS is an acronym of "Television InfraRed Observation Satellite" and is also the plural of "tiro" which means "a young soldier, a beginner".[3]

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (now DARPA) initiated the TIROS program in 1958 and transferred the program to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959.[4] Participants in the TIROS program also included, United States Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory, Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the United States Weather Bureau Service, the United States Naval Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).[5]

History

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First TV image of Earth from space

The TIROS project emerged from early efforts examining the feasibility of surveillance from space for meteorology and intelligence gathering which began in the U.S. as early as the late 1940s.[6][7] The Radio Corporation of America conducted a study in 1951 for the RAND Corporation, concluding that a spaceborne television camera could provide useful information for general reconnaissance.[8] In 1956, the RCA received funding from the U.S. Army to develop a reconnaissance satellite program, initially called Janus, under the administration of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA). The project remained under the administration of ABMA but was transferred to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now DARPA) in 1958.[6] The contract called for the development of a spacecraft to be launched using the Jupiter-C launch vehicle, which was eventually revised to the Juno II launch vehicle.[8] Janus and Janus II, prototype satellites without directional stability and a single onboard camera, was built as part of the project.[9][10] In May 1958, a committee chaired by William Welch Kellogg of the RAND Corporation with representatives from the U.S. Armed Forces, U.S. Weather Bureau, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and the RCA was convened to discuss a satellite meteorological program and design objectives. The committee recommended that such a program should provide observations of cloud cover with television cameras at coarser and finer resolutions, accompanied by infrared measurements of Earth's radiation; the goal of the first meteorological satellites would be to trial experimental television techniques, validate sun- and horizon-based sensors for spacecraft orientation, and collect meteorological data.[9][11]

While Janus was in development, Herbert York, the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, moved Department of Defense reconnaissance satellites out of the purview of the U.S. Army.[9] With meteorological satellites flagged as a high priority requirement by the U.S. government, the RCA shifted the goals of the Janus project towards meteorological applications, whose relaxed resolution requirements for cameras enabled smaller and lighter satellite systems.[12] Accordingly, the resolution of the television cameras planned for Janus were lowered,[6] relying on off-the-shelf refractive optics rather than the more sophisticated systems originally planned.[13] The U.S. Army also granted an ARPA request to develop a larger launch vehicle for larger satellites, allowing the RCA to change the Janus design to a larger spin-stabilized spacecraft.[9] The Janus project was renamed to Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) following the changes and the project was declassified.[6] Development of the satellite payload was contracted to the Army Signal Corps Laboratories and $3.6 million was allocated to Air Force Systems Command for use of the Thor launch vehicle.[12] Prior to signing the National Aeronautics and Space Act creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), President Dwight D. Eisenhower determined that meteorological satellite development should be handled by NASA. Edgar Cortright, who was the ARPA committee overseeing the TIROS project, arranged the transfer of TIROS to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on April 13, 1959. The acquisition of the TIROS project from ARPA by NASA was seen as a means to provide good publicity and validate the existence of the nascent civilian agency.[6] The agency treated the project as an experimental testbed rather than as an operational aid or as a platform for taking scientific observations.[8]

The initial TIROS mission design called for three satellites. Each satellite was to include a two-lens optical television system built by the RCA, an improved infrared scanning system drawn from the Vanguard 2 spacecraft, and a radiometer developed by Verner E. Suomi to measure Earth's energy budget.[12][6] However, only the optical system was included in the first TIROS payload, TIROS-1, which launched on April 1, 1960, as the first U.S. satellite to carry a television camera.[6][8] The originally planned instruments were included in the subsequent launches of TIROS-2, TIROS-3, and TIROS-4 over the following two years.[14] Despite the early success of TIROS, early difficulties with handling TIROS data and political pressure to develop an operational weather satellite system based around a second spacecraft in development, Nimbus.[15] However, the high cost of the Nimbus program ultimately led to TIROS-based spaeccraft serving as the United States' fleet of operational weather satellites.[16]

Description

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William G. Stroud displaying TIROS-I's circuitry to Lyndon B. Johnson on 4 April 1960.

The 122 kg (269 lb) satellite was launched into a nearly circular low Earth orbit by a Thor-Able rocket. Drum-shaped with a 42-inch (110 cm) diameter, and height of 19 inches (48 cm), the TIROS satellite carried two 6-inch (15 cm) long television cameras. One of the cameras had a wide-angle lens with an f/1.6 aperture that could view an 800-mile-wide area of the Earth. The other camera had a telephoto lens with an f/1.8 aperture and 10- to 12-power magnification[citation needed] compared to the wide angle camera.

The satellite itself was stabilized in its orbit by spinning like a gyroscope. When it first separated from the rocket's third stage, it was spinning at about 136 revolutions per minute (rpm). To take unblurred photographs, a de-spin mechanism slowed the satellite down to 12 rpm after the orbit was achieved.

The camera shutters made possible the series of still pictures that were stored and transmitted back to earth via 2-watt FM transmitters as the satellite approached one of its ground command points. After transmission, the tape was erased or cleaned and readied for more recording.

Series

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Diagram showing progression of meteorological satellites from TIROS I to TIROS-N

TIROS continued as the more advanced TIROS Operational System (TOS),[17] and eventually was succeeded by the Improved TIROS Operational System (ITOS) or TIROS-M,[18] and then by the TIROS-N[19] and Advanced TIROS-N[20] series of satellites. NOAA-N Prime (NOAA-19) is the last in the TIROS series of NOAA satellites that observe Earth's weather and the environment.[21]

The naming of the satellites can become confusing because some of them use the same name as the over-seeing organization, such as "ESSA" for TOS satellites overseen by the Environmental Science Services Administration (for example, ESSA-1) and "NOAA" (for example, NOAA-M) for later TIROS-series satellites overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.[21]

  • TIROS-1 (A): launched on 1 April 1960, suffered electrical system failure on 15 June 1960
  • TIROS-2 (B): launched on 23 November 1960, failed on 22 January 1961
  • TIROS-3 (C): launched on 12 July 1961, deactivated on 28 February 1962
  • TIROS-4 (D): launched on 8 February 1962, failed on 30 June 1962 (both cameras failed earlier)
  • TIROS-5 (E): launched on 19 June 1962, failed on 13 May 1963
  • TIROS-6 (F): launched on 18 September 1962, failed on 21 October 1963
  • TIROS-7 (G): launched on 19 June 1963, deactivated on 3 June 1968
  • TIROS-8 (H): launched on 23 December 1963, deactivated on 1 July 1967
  • TIROS-9 (I): launched on 22 January 1965, failed on 15 February 1967. First Tiros satellite in near-polar orbit
  • TIROS-10 (OT-1): launched on 2 July 1965, deactivated on 1 July 1967.

As of June 2009, all TIROS satellites launched between 1960 and 1965 (with the exception of TIROS-7) were still in orbit.[22]

TIROS Operational System

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ITOS/TIROS-M

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  • TIROS-M (ITOS-1): launched on 23 January 1970
  • NOAA-1 (ITOS-A): launched on 11 December 1970
  • ITOS-B launched on 21 October 1971, unusable orbit
  • ITOS-C
  • NOAA-2 (ITOS-D): launched on 15 October 1972
  • ITOS-E launched on 16 July 1973, failed to orbit
  • NOAA-3 (ITOS-F): launched on 6 November 1973
  • NOAA-4 (ITOS-G): launched on 15 November 1974
  • NOAA-5 (ITOS-H): launched 29 July 1976

TIROS-N

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Graphic of the operational life of various satellites of the TIROS-N design
  • TIROS-N (Proto-flight): Launched 13 October 1978 into a 470-nmi orbit; deactivated on 27 February 1981.[32]
  • NOAA-6 (NOAA-A prior to launch): Launched 27 June 1979 into a 450-nmi orbit. The HIRS, a primary mission sensor, failed 19 September 1983. The satellite exceeded its two-year designed lifetime by almost six years when deactivated on 31 March 1987.[32][33]
  • NOAA-B: Launched 29 May 1980. It failed to achieve a usable orbit because of a booster engine anomaly.[21]
  • NOAA-7 (C): Launched 23 June 1981 into a 470-nmi orbit; deactivated June 1986.[32]
  • NOAA-12 (D): Launched 14 May 1991 into a 450-nmi AM orbit, out of sequence (see below). Placed in standby mode on 14 December 1998, when NOAA-15 became operational[32] and deactivated on 10 August 2007, setting an extended lifetime record of over sixteen years.[21]

Advanced TIROS-N

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The Advanced TIROS-N (ATN) spacecraft were similar to the NOAA-A through -D satellites, apart from an enlarged Equipment Support Module to allow integration of additional payloads. A change from the TIROS-N through NOAA-D spacecraft was that spare word locations in the low bit rate data system TIROS Information Processor (TIP) was used for special instruments such as the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBE) and SBUV/2. The search and rescue (SAR) system became independent, utilizing a special frequency for transmission of data to the ground.[34]

  • NOAA-8 (E): Launched 28 March 1983 into a 450 nmi (830 km; 520 mi) orbit, out of sequence (before NOAA-D) to get the first SAR system on a US satellite operational.[21] Deactivated 29 December 1985, following a thermal runaway which destroyed a battery.[33]
  • NOAA-9 (F): Launched 12 December 1984 into 470 nmi "afternoon" orbit and was the first satellite to carry an SBUV/2 instrument. It was deactivated on 1 August 1993 but was reactivated three weeks later, after the failure of NOAA-13. The SARR transmitter failed on 18 December 1997 and the satellite was permanently deactivated on 13 February 1998.[32][33]
  • NOAA-10 (G): Launched 17 September 1986 into a 450 nmi "morning" orbit. Placed in standby mode on 17 September 1991 (when NOAA-12 became operational)[33] and deactivated on 30 August 2001.[32]
  • NOAA-11 (H): Launched 24 September 1988 into a 470 nmi PM orbit. Placed in standby mode in March 1995 and was reactivated in May 1997 to provide soundings after an HIRS anomaly on NOAA-12.[33] Decommissioned 16 June 2004.[35]
  • NOAA-13 (I): Launched 9 August 1993 into a 470 nmi PM orbit; two weeks after launch the spacecraft suffered a catastrophic power system anomaly. Attempts to contact or command the spacecraft were unsuccessful.[32]
  • NOAA-14 (J): Launched 30 December 1994 into a 470 nmi PM orbit and decommissioned 23 May 2007 after more than twelve years of operation.[35]
  • NOAA-15 (K): Launched 13 May 1998 into a 450 nmi morning orbit and replaced NOAA-12 on 14 December 1998, as the primary AM spacecraft. Now secondary, with MetOp-B as the AM primary.[36]
  • NOAA-16 (L): Launched 21 September 2000 into a 470-nmi afternoon orbit; replaced NOAA-14 on 19 March 2001, as the primary AM spacecraft.[32] Decommissioned on 9 June 2014 due to major spacecraft anomaly.[37]
  • NOAA-17 (M): Launched 24 June 2002 into a 450 nmi AM orbit and decommissioned 10 April 2013.[35]
  • NOAA-18 (N): Launched 20 May 2005 into a 470 nmi afternoon orbit and replaced NOAA-16 as the PM primary spacecraft on 30 August 2005.[36][37]
  • NOAA-19 (N Prime): Launched 6 February 2009 into a 470 nmi afternoon orbit[38] and replaced NOAA-18 as the PM primary spacecraft on 2 June 2009.[36][39]

References

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  1. ^ Space-Based Remote Sensing of the Earth: A Report to the Congress. NASA Technical Reports Server (Report). September 1987. hdl:2060/19880008662. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  2. ^ "Modern Mechanix: How Tiros Photographs the World". Archived from the original on 18 September 2007. Retrieved 3 November 2007.
  3. ^ "tiro - Wiktionary". en.wiktionary.org. Retrieved 19 April 2017.
  4. ^ "Feb. 7, 1958: U.S. Creates ARPA in Response to Sputnik". spacenews.com. 6 February 2008. Archived from the original on 17 May 2024. Retrieved 17 May 2024.
  5. ^ EXPLORES! (EXPloring and Learning the Operations and Resources of Environmental Satellites!) Archived 1997-07-24 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Conway 2008, pp. 27–28.
  7. ^ Reed, Van Atta & Deitchman 1990, p. 2-1.
  8. ^ a b c d Butler & Sternberg 1960, p. 249.
  9. ^ a b c d Reed, Van Atta & Deitchman 1990, p. 2-2.
  10. ^ Schnapf 1982, p. 9.
  11. ^ Thompson, Susan. "Satellite Development at Signal Corps Laboratories". U.S. Army. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
  12. ^ a b c Reed, Van Atta & Deitchman 1990, p. 2-3.
  13. ^ Butler & Sternberg 1960, p. 252.
  14. ^ Reed, Van Atta & Deitchman 1990, p. 2-5.
  15. ^ Conway 2008, pp. 32–33.
  16. ^ Conway 2008, pp. 37–38.
  17. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Details for Satellite Programme: TOS". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  18. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Details for Satellite Programme: NOAA 3rd generation / ITOS". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  19. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Details for Satellite Programme: NOAA 4th generation". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  20. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Details for Satellite Programme: NOAA 4th generation / POES". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  21. ^ a b c d e "NOAA-N Prime" (PDF). NP-2008-10-056-GSFC. NOAA. 16 December 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 February 2013. Retrieved 8 October 2010. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  22. ^ "U.S. Space Objects Registry". Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. Archived from the original on 21 May 2009. Retrieved 25 June 2009. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  23. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-1". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  24. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-2". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  25. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-3". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  26. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-4". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  27. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-5". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  28. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-6". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  29. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-7". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  30. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-8". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  31. ^ "WMO OSCAR | Satellite: ESSA-9". space.oscar.wmo.int. Retrieved 20 March 2024.
  32. ^ a b c d e f g h "History of NOAA's environmental satellites". Spaceflight Now. 22 June 2002. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  33. ^ a b c d e NOAA-K (PDF) (Booklet), Greenbelt, Maryland: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 1998, p. 20, NP-1997-12-052-GSFC, retrieved 12 June 2015
  34. ^ Kidwell, Katherine B., ed. (November 1998). NOAA Polar Orbiter Data User's Guide (PDF). National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, NC: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. sec. 1.1. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
  35. ^ a b c "POES Decommissioned Satellites". Office of Satellite and Product Operations. NOAA. 30 September 2014. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
  36. ^ a b c "POES Operational Status". Office of Satellite and Product Operations. NOAA. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
  37. ^ a b "NOAA retires NOAA-16 polar satellite". NOAA News Archive. 9 June 2014. Retrieved 7 June 2015. NOAA exclusively operates afternoon polar orbit spacecraft, while its key international partner, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), flies mid-morning orbit spacecraft.
  38. ^ Justin Ray (6 February 2009). "History Abounds in Launch of Crucial Weather Satellite". Spaceflight Now. Retrieved 25 October 2010. A last-of-its-kind weather observatory...
  39. ^ Harrod, Emily D. (28 May 2009). "PSB - All POES, All Instruments, Switch to NOAA-19 as Operational Afternoon Satellite, 2 June 2009". Office of Satellite and Product Operations. NOAA. Retrieved 7 June 2015.

Sources

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