The NOAA series of meteorological satellites are built and operated by the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) . The satellites orbit at an altitude of about 860 km and have an orbit period of about 102 minutes. They move over the ground at 6 km per second, taking an average of 13 minutes to pass from horizon to horizon. They transmit continuously as they scan the earth, the data rate being about 82000 bytes per second. Each satellite is in view from the groundstation 4 to 6 times each day, depending on orbital ground tracks, and normally two satellites are in operation at any one time. The current operational satellites are NOAA-12 and NOAA-14.
There are a range of instruments on board the NOAA satellites. These are:
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