The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program and the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) feature advanced sounders and imagers with unprecedented accuracy, areal coverage, and data quality and volume. Preparations are underway to accommodate these instruments and to build the scientific and computational infrastructure to enable their use as soon after launch as possible. One agent for these major preparatory activities is the multi-agency NASA-NOAA-DOD Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA), which was formed over the past several years. To date, the JCSDA has generated the necessary scientific progress to augment operational use of current satellite data, as evidenced by the many operational implementations and experimental runs at the National Centers for Environmental prediction (NCEP) over the past 18 months. The highest JCSDA (and NCEP) priority in 2003 has been preparation for use of AIRS radiance data. Progress on this and other JCSDA projects will be described. The increased data quality and volume available during the NPOESS era, coupled with JCSDA efforts, will result in significant improvements in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) products in the next decade.