Polar Orbiting Satellites
A low altitude polar orbit is widely used for monitoring the Earth because each day, as the Earth rotates below it, the entire surface is covered. Typically, a satellite in such an orbit moves in a near-circle about 800 km.
Polar orbiting satellites fly at relatively low altitudes of about 800 km above Earth. Therefore they can provide satellite images at high horizontal resolution. When only one polar satellite is employed, the same spot on Earth is visited only twice per day. Therefore more than one polar satellite with different equatorial crossing times is required in order to attain more frequent observations. This lecture introduces you with the different instruments onboard of MetOp A and gives insight into the application of the retrieved information.