Though the U.S. weather satellite Tiros I still circles the earth every 99 minutes, it is electronically dead. Yet during its active life of 78 days, Tiros I transmitted 22,952 cloud-cover pictures that still keep meteorologists in a state of round-eyed euphoria. Never before had earthmen seen so sweeping a view of their planet's splotchy atmosphere.
Last week Meteorologist David Johnson of the U.S. Weather Bureau told how Tiros' twin TV cameras, riding 400 miles up, saw things no one had noticed beforeĀand gave a new dimension to the not-so-precise science of meteorology. Until Tiros, the story of what happens overhead...