NOAA’s New Weather Satellite is Operational, and its Pictures of Earth are Gorgeous

You’d have to be in some kind of sense-of-wonder-repressed coma not to appreciate satellite images of Earth. If you are, then images from the NOAA’s newest satellite might pull you out of it.

And they’re only a taste of the fascinating images that it will provide.

NOAA-21 is a polar-orbiting satellite that was launched on 10 November 2022. It’ll orbit the Earth about 14 times per day, imaging the entire globe twice per day. It’s the second one in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest generation of polar-orbiting, non-geosynchronous, environmental satellites. It’s called the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS.) Their job is to provide global satellite data for weather prediction and climate change models. The NOAA operates a third polar-orbiting satellite called Suomi NPP.