Topic summary
Weather satellites
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Weather satellite.
Polar orbiting
Polar orbiting weather satellites circle the Earth at a typical altitude of 850 km (530 miles) in a north to south (or vice versa) path, passing over the poles in their continuous flight. Polar orbiting weather satellites are in sun-synchronous orbits, which means they are able to observe any place on Earth and will view every location twice each day with the same general lighting conditions due to the near-constant local solar time. Instruments onboard polar orbiting weather satellites offer a much higher resolution than their geostationary counterparts due their proximity to the Earth's surface.