What The Heck Is TIROS?

23 Oct 2018

element14 Presents | AirborneSurfer's VCP Profile | Project Videos

Great vintage background material on NASA's first experimental weather satellite, developed by RCA and launched in 1960. Namesake for an upcoming project.

Top Comments

james.flynn over 5 years ago +2

Thanks for posting! Its great to see stuff like this to know where we came from. Way back when I first graduated, I worked at Cape Canaveral programming AN/YUK-20 computers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
beacon_dave over 5 years ago in reply to airbornesurfer +2

airbornesurfer - this may be of historical interest to you as the '78 TIROS-N satellite was tracked and archived at this receiving station: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/17/dundee_satellite_receiving_station_closure…
jw0752 over 5 years ago +1

Seeing the technology of that time shows just how far we have come in 58 Years. John

airbornesurfer over 5 years ago in reply to beacon_dave

Great article! Thanks for sharing!
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beacon_dave over 5 years ago in reply to airbornesurfer

"Too bad the station itself didn't fare so well."

airbornesurfer - Indeed. There is another article about the closure in Spaceflight magazine:
http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/Spaceflight%20vol.61%20no.6%202019-06%20pages%2002-05%20190422rev02.pdf
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airbornesurfer over 5 years ago in reply to beacon_dave

Oh, that's rad! I love that they kept the Muirhead running for so long! Too bad the station itself didn't fare so well.

Progress, I suppose :/
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beacon_dave over 5 years ago in reply to airbornesurfer

airbornesurfer - this may be of historical interest to you as the '78 TIROS-N satellite was tracked and archived at this receiving station:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/17/dundee_satellite_receiving_station_closure/
(The Muirhead photofacsimile machines are definitely in the 'old stuff' category.)
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airbornesurfer over 5 years ago in reply to james.flynn

Crazy, man! I've been playing around with some O.G. retro computers lately, and the old storage media just fascinate me! Just wait until they get DNA storage down-pat!
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