Polar Operational Environmental Satellites

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Polar Operational Environmental Satellites" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) is a constellation of polar orbiting weather satellites funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) with the intent of improving the accuracy and detail of weather analysis and forecasting.^[1] The spacecraft were provided by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center oversaw the manufacture, integration and test of the NASA-provided TIROS satellites.^[2] The first polar-orbiting weather satellite launched as part of the POES constellation was the Television Infrared Observation Satellite-N (TIROS-N), which was launched on 13 October 1978. The final spacecraft, NOAA-19 (NOAA-N Prime), was launched on 6 February 2009.^[3] The ESA-provided MetOp satellite operated by EUMETSAT utilize POES-heritage instruments for the purpose of data continuity. The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1, now NOAA-20), which was launched on 18 November 2017, is the successor to the POES Program.^[4]

On-orbit satellite operations of POES is performed by NOAA's Office of Satellite and Product Operations (OSPO).^[5]