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
Joint Polar Satellite System following the restructuring dissolution of the National Polar-orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program. The original satellite orbit concept from the NPOESS program was divided between two sponsor agencies: NOAA was given responsibility for the afternoon orbit, while environmental measurements from morning orbit were to be obtained from the Defense Weather Satellite System (DWSS). DWSS was cancelled in April 2012. The military will continue to rely on the Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) constellation of satellites until the Weather System Follow-on satellites are operational. An independent review team (IRT) was assigned to provide an independent assessment of the total