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
The Weather Channel set to expire on December 31 (after which the deadline for a new carriage deal was extended by two weeks), the satellite provider began carrying WeatherNation TV (the successor to The Weather Cast and owned by WeatherNation, LLC) on channel 361 on December 16, 2013 – placing the channel next to The Weather Channel's slot on channel 362; WeatherNation replaced The Weather Channel on channel 362 – while still being carried on channel 361 – when TWC was pulled. The Weather Channel's chief executive officer David Kenny stated that it offered DirecTV the best rate for its programming (according to