During the Fourth Space Conference, a paper was presented entitled The Image Dissector Camera, A new Approach to Spacecraft Sensors . This is a continuation of that paper. Two daylight cloud cover cameras were discussed in the earlier paper. They were the Applications Technology Satellite III Image Dissector Camera (ATS III IDC) and the Nimbus Image Dissector Camera System (NIMBUS IDCS). Since the ATS III IDC was initially activated in orbit on November 7, 1967, it has sent back to earth more than 1300 cloud cover pictures with near full earth disk coverage per picture. The first Nimbus IDCS flew aboard the illfated Nimbus B which had to be destroyed immediately following booster lift-off, but launch of the backup camera aboard Nimbus B-2 is scheduled within a few weeks.
Development studies are presently being funded by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on two other image dissector camera applications. The first is a 5000 TV line camera that is scheduled to be flown aboard ATS-F. The major objective of this high resolution system is to supply cloud photographs of the full earth disk from which cloud motion studies can be made. The second study involves a three aperture image dissector which is being developed as the sensor for e. multi-spectral camera for earth resources applications. The resolution capability of this system is 2600 TV lines