Premature Agena cutoff left the craft
in an elliptical orbit rather than a more circular one and one of
the solar panels failed 26 days into the mission. In spite of these
problems, 27,000 pictures were taken and 60 ground stations were
involved in the direct readout of this imagery. The infrared
imagery was much clearer than those sampled by the TIROS series.
NIMBUS I remained operational until September 23, 1964.
PARTICIPANTS:
NASA, General Electric, ITT, Fairchild - Hiller, RCA, US Weather
Bureau.