Polar Orbiting Satellites- Introduction

• Orbits are sun-synchronous circular orbits that almost pass over the poles.

• Altitudes of the orbits are much lower than for the Geostationary satellites.  Altitudes are typically at 850 km.

• Orbital periods are about 98-102 minutes.

• Hence, each satellite will complete about 14 orbits in one day.

• The commonly used polar orbiting data comes from the NOAA Polar Orbiters (POES) and the DMSP satellites.

• Imagery from successive orbits overlay with each other to give global daily coverage.  This data is used in NWP models.