The Best Eye Yet

Looking for all the world like a buoy that sprouted wings, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Nimbus weather satellite last week soared into space from its pad at Point Arguello, Calif. The Nimbus program has already cost more than $100 million, but the price tag may be well worth it. The ninth weather eye to be orbited by the U.S., the General Electric-built Nimbus is at once the biggest and most advanced weather satellite sent into space since Tiros I pioneered the use of satellites for meteorology more than four years ago.

Not at the Stars. Where Tiros was aimed uselessly out into space much of the time, Nimbus forever focuses earthward -- the result of infra-red controls, which utilize warmth radiated from the earth to keep Nimbus pointed in the right direction. This alone means four to five times more cloud cover photographs. Nimbus' size (830 lbs.) is its greatest advantage, allowing room for a set of daylight cameras that take photos five times clearer than Tiros' best cameras took, and enough batteries on board to supply transmitters with 450 watts of power v. 20 watts for Tiros.

Nimbus passes close to the earth's poles instead of following an equatorial orbit as Tiros did, thus covers a new 1,500-mile-wide swath of the earth ev ery 100 minutes. Nimbus can photograph every square mile of earth twice a day; special infra-red radiometers shoot "pictures" of the dark surfaces.

No Poles, No Deserts. Tiros has long proved the worth of a weather satellite by picking out the classic cyclonic shape of tropical storms, made history when it identified Hurricane Esther in 1961 several days before it would have been spotted by conventional means. But neither Tiros nor any other weather observer has ever been able to make regular and thorough weather observations of the poles, where scientists believe major influences on the world's weather originate, the major deserts or the southern oceans. From its polar orbit, Nimbus will do all this--and more.

Pictures from one of Nimbus' three camera systems can be used for weather forecasting by anybody willing to spend $32,000 on a ground receiving installation; WLAC-TV in Nashville has already installed equipment that will permit it to pick up weather pictures when Nimbus is overhead. By week's end Nimbus had snapped more than 2,000 pictures and transmitted them to NASA receiving stations at Gilmore Creek, Alaska, and Rosman, N.C. "I won't say that one Nimbus spacecraft does the work of thousands of ground-based stations," said Nimbus Project Manager Harry Press. "But the potential of weather satellites is now precisely that."

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