NPOESS, a tri-agency program, supports missions of the Department of Commerce (DOC)/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Defense (DoD), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NPOESS provides a critical, timely, reliable, and high quality space-based sensing capability to acquire and process global and regional environmental imagery and specialized meteorological, climatic, terrestrial, oceanographic, solar-geophysical, and other data products. These products are provided in a timely fashion to national weather and environmental facilities operated by NOAA and DoD, to NASA, and to environmental remote sensing science community users to support civil and military functions. These data are also provided in real time to field terminals deployed worldwide.

NPOESS delivers significantly improved data quality, resolution, and timeliness that enables major benefits to the civilian and military sectors. For the civilian sector, NPOESS improves the timeliness and accuracy of public severe weather warnings and forecasts; contributes to increased safety of the maritime and aviation communities, and increases agricultural productivity. For the military community, NPOESS products provide more accurate and timely reporting of current and future surface, atmospheric, maritime, and space environment conditions which improves the full spectrum – land, air, sea, and space – of military operations.

NPOESS, comprised of the spacecraft, instruments and sensors on the spacecraft, the command, control and communications infrastructure, data processing software and hardware, and launch support capabilities, is scheduled for launch in 2009.