When NASA and its Soviet rivals launched the first meteorological satellites into space in the 1960s, weather forecasts on Earth changed forever. With a constellation of eyes in the sky, forecasters could suddenly monitor conditions over oceans and remote landmasses, filling in major gaps in their models and providing an early warning system about potential storms forming far away.
Today, as climate change makes weather more difficult to predict, and as extreme weather events increase in frequency and ferocity, meteorologists are hoping another big technological breakthrough will give them an edge.
