Five small directly opposed pairs of solid-fuel thrusters maintained a spin of 8 to 12 rpm.

[2] For attitude control, the spacecraft used an infrared horizon sensor[1] and a magnetic attitude control device, made of 250 cores of wire wound around the outer surface, which oriented the spin axis to a 1 to 2 degree accuracy.

[1] The satellite had two independent television camera subsystems, one low-resolution and one high-resolution, for taking pictures of cloud cover.

Each camera had a magnetic tape recorder for storing photographs while out of range of the ground station network.

[2] TIROS-2 was launched on November 23, 1960 at 11:13:03 UTC, by a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.