POES Orbiter Vital Statistics

Here, we refer to the "fleet" of NOAA polar orbiting spacecraft. Begun in 1970 with the launch of NOAA-1, there are currently five NOAA orbiters in some state of operation: NOAA-12, -14, -15, -16, and NOAA-17.

• Sun-synchronous polar orbit over the Earth
• At an approximate altitude of 830 km.
• Five channel imager, all at 1.1 km resolution
  • Channel 1 - Visible (0.58 - 0.68 micron)
  • Channel 2 - Infrared (0.725 - 1.0 micron)
  • Channel 3A - Infrared (1.58 - 1.64 micron) Channel 3B - Infrared (3.55 - 3.93 micron)
  • Channel 4 - InfraRed (10.3 - 11.3 micron)
  • Channel 5 - InfraRed (11.5 - 12.5 micron)

Orbit Schedule

The NOAA spacecraft were intended to operates in "pairs" giving a morning and an afternoon pass, each. The full orbit pass takes about ninety minutes, so local coverage might include two or three consecutive passes from a given satellite.

With so many still in operation, the spacecraft orbits have been "spread out" a bit, and offer greater temporal coverage. However, some of the currently operating spacecraft have subsystems that are compromised to one degree or another. There is a spacecraft status page (see Related Links) that details the state of each satellite.

POES News and Event Log

Mar 19, 2005: The launch of NOAA-n (to become NOAA-18) is planned to take place around 2:20am at the Vandenberg AFB in California.