 When I was asked to do this, I wondered why was I picked? Because there were six project managers from Nimbus out of the last one. Then I checked out, found out there was only two of us living, and Harry Preston's out in Oregon. And so that left me. But what I'm going to do today is cover three areas. One is the Nimbus background, the history of the start. Second would be some first. I think Chuck has done a better job of covering first, so I'll go through that rather quickly. And third will be my observations during the period of time that I was across the manager for a Nimbus and Landsat. The Nimbus story begins with the first US neurology satellite at the Army Signal Corps up at Fort Monmouth. When Bill Stroud proposed an instrument for cloud cover measuring instrument for Vanguard, it was one of the five or six instruments that were chosen for Vanguard that would have flown over the various missions. It did fly in February of 59 and operated for 20 days on a battery. It was not a source of light. That was a forerunner of Carlos, that program. And that was a part of the IGUI, the National Geophysical Year, to start in 57. So it was selected in 57, flew in 59, and then the first Tyrells flew, of course, in April of 60. Well, that crew, Bill Stroud and the company, transferred to Goddard. When Goddard was being formed, various groups came together were brought in mass, first one being the group and then RL, which was the Vanguard crew. I came in after that. And the next one was the group out of Fort Monmouth. There's about 14 or 15 engineers and scientists. And they came to Goddard in April of 59. I hope I don't have to back up. Hope you could hear me now. OK, sorry. That team that came down from Monmouth consisted of Stroud, John Lick, Rudy Honnell, Rudy Stamphill, Bill Nordberg, and Bill Bandeen. They actually did the design and architecture for Nimbus. So they were key in getting this started. And I'm sure there are others, but I got this history from some aroused stuff and some talking to a few individuals. So if I left anybody out, it was no intention to do that. Soon after that, the team Stroud and Ed Courtright, who was then headquarters, did a tour of the United States, finding out what the interest was and follow on satellite, a research satellite. And they then came back and developed the specs and the objectives for it. So that was then later in 59. By 60, fiscal year 60, which would have been mid-year 59, Nimbus was established as an R&D program to serve as a tireless replacement. There were going to be three satellites, one unpaid for by NASA and two by what was then ESA, the Environmental Satellite Services Administration. I knew Ralph would get me straight. And that got it started. That was a kick. I'm sorry. I was worried about going backwards. I didn't go forward. OK. All right, we're with it now. Well, problems developed as always happens on satellite programs. None of us have been on one that didn't, certainly in the beginning. And these problems caused ESA to drop out in 63. So Nimbus at that point then became an R&D platform for satellite's Earth remote sensing. Was originally conceived as an in-house project. And some of you were around here in those days. There was a lot of in-house activity going on. There were, in most times, three or four explorers being worked on and one or two observatories, either parts are all being worked on. So it wouldn't be unusual to make Nimbus as an in-house program. But it was. And of course, it was contracted out with General Electric. It was that design that was developed by the Stroud team was really a five-foot diameter ring, which would hold the electronics. And the base then would hold the instruments. And as you've seen in the models around here, the instruments pointed down from there. And it was mentioned earlier also the Sun-Sectus orbit was selected to provide observation, continuity, and repeatability, about 1,000 kilometers circular orbit. Launches were from Vandenberg to ensure we would get the Sun-Sectus orbit. And the midnight, launch in midnight to get to noon equator sending node orbit. The first four nemesis were on the Thor gena. The last three, five, six, and seven were on Augmented Thor Delta, or Delta, we call it in those days. As you've heard already, each mission was progressively higher resolution and more complex as Nimbus one had three instruments. Nimbus seven had nine. Nimbus seven was designated as Environmental Monitoring Satellite, and I remember when I was brought on board that was something that was pointed out to me. It was a difference from the previous missions. They hadn't used that terminology. But it really was a predecessor to the Earth Observation Satellites and the ISAC that's ongoing today. As you've already heard, over the 30-year period, 33 instruments had been on board the number seven Nimbus satellites. The operating lifetimes are kind of interesting. The first mission, and I find this surprising, but that's what Ralph's history tells me, had a six month lifetime. It did not meet it, of course. It had the problem with the solar ray drive locked up. But four, five, six, and seven had five-year lifetimes, and they all went beyond that all the way out as far as the number seven, 15 years. So a lot of good data was gathered out of seven missions over that 30-year period, which would have only have provided you, if it just met the mission lifetime, far less good use of this. The numbers first, and Chuck has touched on some of these, the numbers four was the first one with an on-board computer using TI integrated circuits. And it was the first civilian satellite with three acts of stabilization to one degree accuracy. There probably were satellites that don't talk about an open forum that had a greater pointing capacity, but this was the first in a civil satellite. And the first RTG that was on numbers two then, of course, was lost and then recovered, as was mentioned earlier. Continuous operations and the continuous means ongoing began with, at least on these three instruments, the iris, the BUV and the toms. The iris started in April of 69, the BUV on April of 70, and in October of 78, the first toms, the ozone mapping instrument. The twirly rams, which you'll hear more about later on, was first to do for the full run of international search and rescue. They never called it that, but actually, the Nimbus basic spacecraft was what I would call the first multi-purpose spacecraft. There were 10 of them, three of them for Landsats and seven for Nimbus. And in those days, I don't know of any other program that had that length of missions using the same spacecraft, same basic spacecraft design. The number seven measures, sea surface temperatures, I'm not sure where Chuck mentioned that one. I'm sure it's on his chart. And what I'll talk to you a little bit later is that we did the first field disassembly on Nimbus G or Nimbus 7 later. Now with some of my observations as project manager, it was obvious when I was asked to join the project, and I had never worked on an earth-pointing mission. I had been involved with missions that were science missions looking at either astronomy, high energy, astrophysics, R fields and particles in situ measurements. The team I determined very quickly was a very competent, very good team. And I learned something from a fellow named Edwards Deming, who was an efficiency expert. He's the guy that went to Japan and straightened out their auto industry right after World War II. He said, the willing worker will always do the right thing if management doesn't screw them up. And I was determined not to screw them up. And this gang of folks, some of them which are here, were outstanding. It was no problem they couldn't tackle, and they had worked it from the basic design to getting data products out in a timely manner. Something else I found out joining that project is you had at that point four satellites on orbit, plus two. That would be three nemesis, one Landsat, and one Landsat, and one nemesis, and the assembly stage in preparation for launch. So it was like a whole new ballgame. Not only did you have to be concerned with getting the ones up at Valley Forge built in launch, but you had to worry, is Ralph going to call me in the middle of the night and say that paper quarter stopped or something? But he knew it wouldn't do any good to do that, so he didn't do it. Another thing we found that this mission, number seven, didn't have principal investigators like earlier missions had, and certainly not like the science missions I'd been used to. Instead, they were the experiment teams, and they defined the instrument requirements. They defined how it should be built and tested, and they also defined the algorithms for taking the radiances and converting it into useful information. So they went cradle to grave, and those were very, very good competent teams, anywhere from three to seven people per team. Also found that you can never please all the scientists, certainly with giving them enough calibration. I had an occasion on number seven when it's going into thermal vacuum, final thermal vacuum test is an integrated observatory. Got a call from our guys who are up there working it. They say, we cannot satisfy one scientist. He will not say we're ready to start thermal vacuum because he has not had enough calibration. So I grabbed a car and a bottle of scotch, and I went up there to talk to him. It was an interesting conversation, and I thought it wouldn't have rebellion, but after about half the scotch was gone, they were convinced that we'll make it work because I said, we will go on the thermal vacuum and we'll tell the scientists that's just where it is. You'll fly, you don't fly. And I said, by the way, if he really gives you a rough time, you could put him in a chamber with it, but it's probably not a good idea. Well, it turns out that instrument operated for 15 years. So I guess he had enough calibration because he put out a lot of good information. Another interesting one that, oh, it gets a bit better. Yeah, here we go. I got a call one day from the center director, Bob Cooper. We were already at ship Nimbus G out to the Western Test Range and preparing it for meeting to the Delta. And he said, solder balls have been found in a tape recorder at RCA, and those tape recorders are just like the ones on board of your spacecraft. So disassemble them, take them out, and have them inspected. So I go to GE and say, I've been directed that we need to take out those three tape recorders and inspect them. And their reaction was, you gotta be kidding. We don't do field disassembly. We never have done field disassembly, and therefore it will have to be taken back to Valley Forge and disassembled up there and then subjected to a whole new series of tests. And oh, by the way, that's big bucks and whole lots of time. Said, no, that won't work. Develop me some procedures for taking the part in the field. We'll review those procedures. Our team will review them with you. If we're satisfied, we will proceed to do it that way. Well, we did. Took them out, all three tape recorders. No solder balls were found. Put it back together and just did functional testing, no environmental testing. And we flew, and we had operated for 15 years, so I guess that was all right. Another interesting phone call was one morning phone rang and this gentleman says, I'm calling from Bar Harbor, Maine. My name is Max Anderson, and I'm getting ready to fly a balloon across the Atlantic. And I hear you guys got something that might be of use to me if I have problems. And I knew the right guy to call, Chuck Cody. And I called Chuck and he'll tell you the rest of the story later. This is one that probably most people don't believe, but we actually did come in under budget on number seven. I don't know that any other mission can say that. And it wasn't massive amounts of money, but it was something around a million dollars, which in those days was still a decent amount of money. I don't know about today though. One last thing I'll close with. After I took over at TDRS, I went down to Johnson Space Center and was talking to the deputy director. And he was asking me, what had I done before I came on TDRS? And I said, well, most recent experiences with Landsat and Nimbus launched them last year. He said, oh, that's nice, but that's not really NASA. I mean, I think the scientific discoveries and the technological advancements that we've seen from Nimbus and still seeing today with programs here at Goddard, that's real NASA. Thank you.