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Weather & Forecasting · Recorded milestone

Weather satellite

Recorded year1960

TIROS-1 sends back the first television images of Earth's weather.

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Built on

Electronic televisionRecorded · 1927requires
TransistorRecorded · 1947requires
Silicon solar cellRecorded · 1954requires
First satelliteRecorded · 1957enables

Led to

World Weather WatchRecorded · 1963enables
Earth-observation satelliteRecorded · 1972enables
Geostationary weather satelliteRecorded · 1974enables
GPS radio occultationRecorded · 2006enables
Weather microsatellite swarmRecorded · 2023enables

Sources & evidence

Additional source

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.