Jun 26 1988
From The Space Library
This date marked the tenth anniversary of the launch of NASA's SEASAT Satellite, which ushered in a new era in space research focusing on unsolved questions of the world's oceans and weather. Launched on June 26, 1978, on an Atlas-Agena rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, SEASAT carried a payload of five scientific instruments unlike any package carried on previous remote-sensing satellites.
Among the experimental instruments SEASAT pioneered were a synthetic aperture radar, which provided highly detailed images of ocean and land surfaces; a radar scatterometer to measure near-surface wind speed and direction; a radar altimeter to measure the height of the ocean surface and waves; and a scanning multichannel microwave radiometer to measure surface temperature, wind speeds, and sea ice cover. The satellite also carried a passive visual and infrared radiometer to provide supporting data for the other four experiments.
SEASAT demonstrated how space sensors could be used in oceanography, serving as a prototype for a generation of international missions that could pro-vide answers to some of the world's most baffling and threatening weather phenomena. (NASA Release 88-84)
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