The spacecraft were designed to serve as stabilized, Earth-oriented platforms for the testing of advanced systems to sense and collect atmospheric science data.

NASA transferred the technology tested and refined by the Nimbus missions to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for its operational satellite instruments.

The technology and lessons learned from the Nimbus missions are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched over the past three decades.

[1] At the time of its launch, the idea that intangible properties such as air pressure could be observed using a satellite orbiting hundreds of miles above the Earth was revolutionary.

As scientists consider the causes and effects of global warming, Nimbus radiation budget data provide a base for long-term analyses and make change-detection studies possible.

The Nimbus technology gave rise to current radiation-budget sensors, such as the CERES instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.

[citation needed] Scientists conducted experiments from NASA experimental aircraft and proved that atmospheric chemicals such as the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) released from refrigerants and aerosol sprays did destroy ozone.

[6] When the Nimbus 5 spacecraft launched in 1972, scientists planned for its Electrically Scanning Microwave Radiometer to collect global observations of where and how much it rained across the world.

The data it collected during its 9-year lifespan provide a significant chunk of the long-term record of Earth's sea ice concentration that today's scientists use for studies of climate change.

In a phenomenon that has not been observed since, an enormous, ice-free patch of water, called a polynya, developed three years in a row in the seasonal ice that encases Antarctica each winter.