Weather satellite of rotation and its elliptical orbit kept it from collecting a notable amount of useful data. The Explorer VI and VII satellites also contained weather-related experiments. The first weather satellite to be considered a success was TIROS-1, launched by NASA on April 1, 1960. TIROS operated for 78 days and proved to be much more successful than Vanguard 2. TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program, whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched since then. Beginning with the Nimbus 3 satellite in 1969, temperature information through the tropospheric
Weather satellite offer a much better resolution than their geostationary counterparts due their closeness to the Earth. The United States has the NOAA series of polar orbiting meteorological satellites, presently NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 (POES) and NOAA-20 (JPSS). Europe has the Metop-A and Metop-B satellites operated by EUMETSAT. Russia has the Meteor and RESURS series of satellites. China has FY-3A, 3B and 3C. India has polar orbiting satellites as well. The United States Department of Defense's Meteorological Satellite (DMSP) can "see" the best of all weather vehicles with its ability to detect objects almost as 'small' as a huge oil tanker. In