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judgement and a firm, experienced hand, Watters handled literally every type of problem imaginable every day and he did it with great insight and good humor. His many talents were fully tested in this challenging assignment, which some of us likened to being a chaplain in an insane asylum. It must thereby be realized that the chapter of space activities, singled out for special discussion in this article, represented but a small fraction of the overall mission effort conducted by the 3500 personnel at the laboratory complex.
     As we entered 1959, our space contributions continued.
     After four failures since April 1958 to place a full size instrumented payload into orbit, the last of them containing the SRDL conceived and developed "cloud-cover" instrumentation, Vanguard was ready on 17 February
1959 to make another try. It was successful and the Vanguard program had finally delivered the first of the long overdue originally planned IGY satellites. It was designated Vanguard 2 and carried the backup model of our cloud-cover instrumentation.
     But while successful physical orbiting of the 22-pound payload was demonstrated, a mishap during the final orbit insertion made the payload virtually . useless. The satellite had already been separated from the burnt out last stage rocket and was perfectly on its way when residual fuel in the rocket reignited and propelled it forward, kicking the satellite in the back and sending it tumbling erratically. The cloud-cover imaging concept was based on scanning the earth in circular sweeps with photoelectric sensors as the rotating satellite moved along its orbit. Therefore, the now irregular tumbling motion made image computation impractical. Ironically, the payload's electronics performed perfectly for the 18 days of battery life, but in spite of desperate attempts to derive images from the data, through simulation and computer programs, the effort had to be given up finally.
     But a much more sophisticated cloud-cover and meteorological satellite was already coming along: TIROS (Television and Infrared Observation Satellite). This satellite included two television cameras, one with a wide angle and one with a narrow angle view. The picture taking periods of these cameras could be preprogrammed from ground stations for each orbit to coincide with proper sunlight conditions and to achieve coverage of desired parts of the globe. The pictures were stored on magnetic tape and transmitted to ground terminals upon interrogation, but also a real-time TV capability was provided.
In 1960 TIROS I (far left) took these two photographs among many others, from several hundred miles east of the Atlantic coast from an altitude of about 450 statute miles. The photos were sent by television to Ft. Monmouth and then transmitted to NASA, which conducted the TIROS project.
 

In addition to the TV feature, the system included infrared sensors for various wavelengths to obtain overall heat balance measurements and coarse IR images using a scanning concept similar to our cloud-cover instrumentation.
     Actually the TIROS did not originate at SRDL, nor was it an SRDL design - although we were involved in many planning phases and in the final design stages, especially in the IR subsystems.
     The project had come a long way from ABMA, where it was derived from Gen. Medaris' ambitious "Eye in the Sky" surveillance satellite concept and had resulted in a contract with the RCA, Princeton. In July 1958, ARPA placed the technical direction of the development and production of the TIROS payload by RCA into the responsibility of SRDL.
     ARPA's sponsorship was later transferred to NASA and when TIROS 1 was successfully launched on I April 1960, it was under the auspices of NASA. All systems operated perfectly and flooded the meteorological community with a total of 22,952 cloudcover pictures.
     The final management of the TIROS project represented a rather complex picture. The Air Force Ballistic Missile Division was in charge of the launching vehicle and the
           65    THE ARMY COMMUNICATOR    WINTER 1982
Page updated January 4, 2004   page created November 04, 2000

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