Weather Data From Sputniks

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31145, 23 August 1966, Page 17

Weather Data From Sputniks

(N.Z.P A. Reuter—Copyright)

MOSCOW, August 22

The Soviet Union appears to be planning a network of high-flying sputniks to relay minute-by-minute weather data to ground stations, providing long-range warnings of hurricanes, cyclones and storms.

Already, Russia’s Cosmos 122 satellite is relaying television pictures of the earth’s cloud cover and technical

data about radiation measurements which a ground computer is transforming into usable information for weather forecasters.

The government newspaper “Izvestia” has published two photographs taken by Cosmos 122 last month, one showing cloud formation over a 620mile area of Siberia, another a picture taken by infra-red process of cyclonic clouds over the southern Atlantic. Infra-red Method

The unmanned spaceship, Russia’s first serious venture into weather forecasting by sputnik, is capable of using the infra-red method to take cloud pictures on the dark night-time side of the earth’s surface. Details of the new weather programme were given in ’’lzvestia” by the academician, Mr Yevgeny Fyodorov, chief of the Soviet Hydro-Meteoro-logical Service. Mr Fyodorov indicated that Cosmos 122, launched two months ago and powered by solar batteries, was the first of a global series. He said the experiment would probably lead to a system of two or three weather sputniks in permanent orbit, whose data could be used to prepare a world-wide meteorological forecast once or twice each day.