TIROS (Television Infrared Observational Satellite)  On April 1, 1960, TIROS 1, the first true weather satellite, was launched.  With each succeeding generation of satellites, remote sensing instruments became increasingly sophisticated and generated finer spectral and spatial resolution imagery.

The Television and Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) carried special television cameras that viewed Earth's cloud cover from a 450 mile orbit. By 1965, nine more TIROS satellites were launched.  They had progressively longer operational times, carried infrared radiometers to study Earth's heat distribution, and several were placed in polar orbits to increase coverage over the first TIROS in its near-equatorial "polar" orbit...