Book on File

Archive/Library Overview

TIROS
WEATHER EYE IN SPACE

by John Jakes - 1966

Contents

I. OF UMBRELLAS AND KINGS    13
II. WIND AND RAIN FOR SALE    27
III. DESTINATION: UP!    41
IV. THE ROAD TO THE EDGE OF SPACE    59
V. To BUILD A PLOWSHARE    79
VI. THE PAYLOAD    93
VII. THE WEATHER EYE OPENS    99
VIII. A CALENDAR OF ACCOMPLISHMENT    117
IX. CHALLENGE TO THE WEATHER BUREAU    143
X. "ON THIS NEW SEA ..."    153
Appendix A    167
Appendix B    179
Appendix C    180
Appendix D    181
Appendix E    182
Index    187

Page 104-112 relate directly to the Diana Site and the test Chamber at Camp Evans

"      The site selected for the East Coast ground equipment was the U. S. Army Research and Development lab at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. It was a logical choice, because the Signal Corps had been associated with the project since the early stages, and RCA's Astro-Electronics Division was in nearby Princeton, to provide back-up support.
       Components for the Fort Monmouth station were first set up and tested by RCA at its Princeton head-quarters in October of '59. The equipment was transferred to Fort Monmouth the following February. RCA ran training sessions similar to those held at Kaena Point, and one of the early satellite models which had been tested but not shipped to the Cape was used in the instruction. Technicians actually practiced programming and interrogating the satellite."

Page 105
"   By September 10 the second test model satellite, T-2, was ready. All the components of T-1 were pulled in October, and after some modifications, T-1 was re-assembled and assigned the number T-1A. This was the satellite which was sent to Fort Monmouth to be used to train ground station operators.
     Prototype T-2 was put together, and the various sub-systems were again integrated into it. On September 25 representatives of the Signal Corps and NASA gathered for a demonstration.
Results: satisfactory."

Page 106
" Early in 1960, technicians at Cape Canaveral received the T-2 prototype and used it for training in the delicate mating and balancing operations which would immediately precede launch. The T-2 was also used to demonstrate and familiarize Cape technicians with techniques for handling the satellite properly.
But up to this point the test units were not complete, ready-for-flight models. The D-1 was.
Even while tests went forward on the T-2, the D-1 was being put together, complete in every detail and ready for a full checkout. The D-1 was run through a series of tests designed to evaluate its performance.
    A "performance-evaluation" test of this kind is simply a series of tests which simulate, on the ground, all the possible operating conditions of the various components of the satellite. And though the satellite was tested at Fort Monmouth, it was linked to the Prince-ton ground facility and meant to operate as though it were already whirling in orbit.
Test results: successful."

Page 107
"    Next came tests subjecting the flight model to the stresses of the environment in which it would be operated. Thrust into a vacuum chamber to duplicate the heat and airlessness of space, the D-1 malfunctioned. Back it went to RCA at Princeton for more work. Other tests on the T-2 model had suggested modifications to take care of problems of vibration, and these modifications were now incorporated into D-1.
   More performance tests. More checking and re-checking of the TV cameras, the recording gear, the receiver and transmitters. Then more tests in the thermal-vacuum chamber. Again components failed.
   At last, after additional successful test sessions, a final test of the calibration of the electronic gear was run on February 28, 1960. The TV cameras were care-fully aligned. Then D-1 went into a specially built, pressurized shipping container and was dispatched to Cape Canaveral on March 7.
   Arriving there, it was thoroughly inspected by project technicians. Its electrical systems were checked out. The antennas for sending and receiving signals were installed, and the satellite was mated to the third-stage rocket. This assembly went into storage in a special dustless, air-conditioned chamber which was a part of Hangar 1366 at the Cape.
    Meanwhile, by a similar series of tests, two other flight models were readied. The third flight model, D-3, arrived at the Cape on March 22, 1960. And it was this model, finally, which was selected for the launch."

Page 110
" The clock began its last sixty seconds of tick-down. Consoles were anxiously watched in the mission's control center hundreds of miles north at Goddard in Maryland. Other anxious men from NASA, RCA, the Signal Corps watched at the Cape."

Page 111
"   Nine seconds-five-three-and two-and one.
Flame, thunder-ignition-lift-off! The Thor-Able rocket rose from the pad at precisely 0640.09 EST, on the first of April, 1960.
   Only sixty seconds went by before strong signals transmitted by TIROS I were received at both the Fort Monmouth and the Princeton stations.
   At 0652 the third stage of the rocket separated, and the satellite was placed into a nearly circular orbit whose highest point above Earth was 465.9 miles.
   And in a bit more than an hour and half, TIROS had completed its first orbit around the globe. A report from a tracking station in Woomera, Australia, indicated that the satellite was spinning at a satisfactory rate of ten rpm. The de-spin operation was therefore a success. The satellite was revolving at the proper rate for good photography.
    And then came real jubilation. The first pictures were in.
TIROS I cameras had looked down-400 miles down -to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and had seen and re-corded ice still blocking the Seaway. This in itself was another significant first, because it indicated that the satellite could be useful in guiding vessels out of the path of wandering ice floes at sea.
   But the incredible success lay in the pictures them-selves, pictures which showed Earth as it had never been looked at before.
And as the satellite raced along in its orbit, at an inclination of about forty-eight degrees, the feasibility of weather observation by this means became the re-"

Page 112
" ality which the men who had labored so long on TIROS had known-hoped-dreamed it would be.
Technicians at Kaena Point and Fort Monmouth kept busy, interrogating the programming TIROS I, seeing its pictures come alive on a vidicon tube, seeing them transformed to usable, feelable glossy blowups of 35mm shots of the images on the TV tube's face."
.
.
.
"   April 10, nine days after launch, TIROS I discovered a tropical cyclone. The storm was centered in the South Pacific, to the north of New Zealand. The TIROS' photographs proved once and for all the value of a weather satellite in locating and tracking storms over land or sea."

Page updated November 4, 2004 Page created November 4, 2004

Back to the InfoAge Homepage