Initiated by ARPA in 1958 and transferred to NASA in 1959, the Television and Infrared Observations Satellites (TIROS) program became the prototype for the current global systems used for weather reporting, forecasting and research by the Defense Department, NASA and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Moreover, TIROS helped define ARPAs model of successfully bringing together scientists and engineers from different services, federal agencies, and contracting firms to solve vexing problems and quickly achieve a complex technical feat.
The program greatly advanced the science of meteorology by placing the first dedicated weather satellite in orbit, TIROS 1, on April 1, 1960.
The mission swiftly proved the viability of observing weather from space. It took 23,000 cloud-cover pictures, of which more than 19,000 were used in weather analysis. For the first time, meteorologists were able to track storms over the course of several days.
