Weather Satellites - Forecasting 15 Years (1970s)

[Music] Kansas City yes that's facility I would get pretty goodes on you we've come a long way in weather forecasting since the early balloon launching days thanks mainly to weather satellites just 15 years ago this month NASA launched the first tyros weather satellite from Cape canabal the views of earth were pretty rudimentary compared to today's highquality pictures but they proved that routine global weather observation by satellite was possible with each succeeding one these weather Sentinels have become more and more sophisticated here the synchronous media mological satellite two are already in orbit with a third schedule for launch this fall besides transmitting cloud cover pictures every 30 minutes day and night SMS can receive and send environmental information from thousands of manned and unmanned data collection platforms located at Sea in rivers lakes and on land the synchronous meteorological satellite picture are made into film Loops daily at the world weather center near Washington DC to show Cloud movement over oceans and land masses meteorologists are hopeful that this kind of information will give them Clues to the weather conditions that for instance caused tornadoes and other fast-moving weather systems weather satellites over the past 15 years they have returned more than 2 million pictures provided Advanced warnings and Allowed no Maj storm anywhere on the globe to go [Applause] undetected these model airplanes have something in common with these real planes they are all part of a NASA research program to learn more about vortices tornado like patterns of air that trail behind the wings of airplanes causing varying degrees of turbulence Dave Scott acting director of NASA's flight Research Center in California explains the vortices are dangerous because uh these bundles of energy as they follow behind the aircraft uh leaving awake uh have the capability of turning over smaller aircrafts uh as they approach a landing and uh because of this we have a great deal of concern that many accidents can be caused by the vortices or these bundles of energies as they uh attempt to turn over an aircraft while all aircraft cause vortices large heavy Jets such as the 747 and dc10 create the more serious problems air traffic density around major airports adds to the severity of the problem because of the many aircraft coming in for a landing and the need to sequence one plane behind the other aircraft are routinely separated at safe distances to avoid the trailing Vortex problem however this often results in increased fuel use and traffic delays smoke generators mounted on the wings of these planes by NASA researchers make it possible to see and investigate the whirling air patterns the research has shown that by adjusting Wing flaps at different angles and by making various design changes the intensity of the vortices can be substantially reduced this kind of aeronautical research today may very well result in even safer more convenient flights in the [Music] future this has been an Aeronautics and Space report presented by NASA the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [Music]