Improved Weather Satellite

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31032, 12 April 1966, Page 11

Improved Weather Satellite

Later this month the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to launch the second Nimbus weather satellite and what’s more it will have G.LR.L.S. on board. Not the usual variety, but a new Global Interrogation, Recording and Location System for collecting data from ground stations, buoys and even drifting balloons.

Tlfc enables the new Nimtus wto receive and store

weather and oceanographic data from instruments in inaccessible areas of the world and radio it back to suitably equipped tracking stations. From the meteorologists point of view, the most significant new system on board Nimbus II will be an infrared radiometer which will measure the temperature and height of cloud tops and provide pictures of cloud cover on the night side of the earth. These will supplement the day-time cloud pictures already provided by the Tiros and Essa weather satellites.

The night-time pictures will be transmitted continuously and can be received by the A.P.T. (Automatic Picture Transmission) ground equip-

ment already in operation in Australia and New Zealand. The main camera system on Nimbus II will consist of three TV cameras which take side-by-side pictures spanning a 2000-mile wide strip of the earth beneath the orbit of Nimbus. These should be of superb quality if the 20,000 pictures radioed back from Nimbus I in 1964 are any indication.

Nimbus I was operational for only a month until its solar cell paddles jammed and were no longer able to follow the sun. During its unexpectedly short life-time Nimbus I successfully located and followed the track of six different hurricanes in the and Pacific Oceans.