SATELLITE LAUNCHED FOR FORECASTING

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30976, 4 February 1966, Page 13

SATELLITE LAUNCHED FOR FORECASTING

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

CAPE KENNEDY, Feb. 3. A picture-taking Tiros weather satellite headed towards a tricky orbit around the earth today, to prepare for the world’s first full-time operational forecasting network.

A 90-foot-tall Delta rocket carried the spacecraft toward a 460-mile-high orbit girdling the globe in a circular path that would carry it near both the North and South Poles.

Project officials said they would not turn on the satellite’s two cameras for about 24 hours even if the launching went perfectly. The flight-plan called for the Delta rocket to propel its payload south-east from Cape Kennedy, eventually to be put into orbit over the Pacific Ocean at a spot 300 miles west of Quito, Ecuador. The 3051 b, drum-shaped satellite was to be first posithe satellite Essa I, since it faced the earth. Radio signals from the ground during the next 24

hours were to tip it on its side gradually so it would roll like a hoop around the globe. Its cameras point out from opposite sides of the cartwheel rim. Alternate Pictures

the satellite Essa I, since it was paid for by the Environmental Science Services Administration, the parent organisation of the United States Weather Bureau. A second Tiros-type satellite, to be called Essa 11, is scheduled to be placed in an 862-mile-high orbit later this month.

They are supposed to snap alternate pictures of cloud formations and storm patterns below as the satellite speeds along at 18,000 miles an hour. Its intended north-south path would put it in daylight at all times and enable the satellite to take a near-com-plete picture of the world’s weather every day as the earth spins inside its orbital path. Once properly in orbit, project officials planned to name