TIROS-M / ITOS

NASA and ESSA launch the ITOS satellite, also known as TIROS-M, a next-generation weather satellite intended to take over from the constellation of short-lived ESSA weather satellites. With a configuration that is, for the first time, significantly different from the TIROS/ESSA satellites, the TIROS-M design’s shakedown cruise is a short and bumpy one: after system failures force a shutdown of the satellite’s attitude control system, it is shut down in mid-1971.