The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are jointly acquiring the next-generation civilian weather and environmental satellite system: the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). The Joint Polar Satellite System will contribute the afternoon orbit component and ground processing system of the restructured National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). As such, the Joint Polar Satellite System replaces the current Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) managed by NOAA and the ground processing component of both POES and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) replacement, known as the Defense Weather Satellite System (DWSS), managed by the Department of Defense (DoD). The Joint Polar Satellite System satellite will carry a suite of sensors designed to collect meteorological, oceanographic, climatological, and solar-geophysical observations of the earth, atmosphere, and space. The ground processing system for the Joint Polar Satellite System is known as the Common Ground System (JPSS CGS), and consists primarily of a Command, Control, and Communications Segment (C3S) and the Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS). Both are developed by Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS).

The Interface Data Processing Segment will process Joint Polar Satellite System and Defense Weather Satellite System satellite data to provide environmental data products (aka, Environmental Data Records or EDRs) to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Defense processing centers operated by the United States government. The Interface Data Processing Segment will process Environmental Data Records beginning with the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) and continue through the lifetime of the Joint Polar Satellite System and Defense Weather Satellite System programs. Under the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System program, the Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems Algorithms and Data Products (A&DP) organization was responsible for the algorithms that produce the Environmental Data Records, including their quality aspects. For the Joint Polar Satellite System, that responsibility has transferred to NOAA's Center for Satellite Applications & Research (STAR).

Given a launch date for the NPOESS Preparatory Project spacecraft on the near horizon and the need for users to become familiar with NPOESS Preparatory Project environmental products, this paper will provide an overview of all the products generated by the Interface Data Processing Segment and provided to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) for public distribution. It will discuss each of the 25 NPOESS Preparatory Project Environmental Data Records in detail, including a description of the Environmental Data Record, its size, coverage, and expected uses.