Weather and Climate Satellites

Satellite meteorology began on April 1, 1960, when NASA launched TIROS-1 (Television Infrared Observation Satellite), the first satellite purpose-built to observe Earth's weather from orbit. TIROS-1 operated for only 78 days but successfully transmitted thousands of cloud-cover images, immediately demonstrating that continuous orbital observation could reveal large-scale storm systems, including developing tropical cyclones, that ground-based observation networks alone could never fully capture. The mission's success led directly to an unbroken line of increasingly capable American weather satellites and, within a decade, to comparable programs in Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan.