The Ninth Flight of the TIROS program was a satellite of many firsts!
Sunday, January 22, was the 52nd anniversary of the launch of TIROS-9, which rocketed into space on that date in 1965!
Although TIROS-9 (TIROS being an acronym for Television and InfraRed Observation Satellite) was the 9th flight unit of the TIROS program, it was the first of the so-called "cartwheel" meteorological TV satellites (a reference to it's configuration) and the first satellite in the TIROS series to be placed in a near-polar orbit. (According to NASA, a malfunction in the satellite's guidance system placed it in a wide, elliptical orbit instead of a more circular one.)
The spin-stabilized spacecraft took the form of an 18-sided right prism and was powered by approximately 9,000 silicon solar cells on its cover assembly that charged its 21 nickel-cadmium batteries. It also carried two identical wide-angle TV cameras for taking earth cloud cover pictures. These images were then transmitted directly to either of two ground receiving stations or stored in a tape recorder on board for playback at a later time if the spacecraft was beyond communication range.
In addition, the satellite was instrumental in producing the first "photomosaic" of the world's cloud-cover, which was achieved via a composite of 450 photos taken on February 13, 1965.
In all, TIROS-9 was operational for 1,238 days before being deactivated by NASA . To learn more about this special spacecraft, visit the following websites:
NASA's Space Science Data Archive
World Meteorological Organization
NASA Science - TIROS
