The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program(DMSP) is a Department of Defense(DoD) program run by the Air Force Space
and Missile Systems Center(SMC). The DMSP program designs, builds, launches, and maintains several near polar orbiting, sun
synchronous satellites monitoring the meteorological, oceanographic, and solar-terrestrial physics environments.
DMSP satellites are in a near polar orbiting, sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of approximately 830 Km above the earth. Each
satellite crosses any point on the earth up to two times a day and has an orbital period of about 101 minutes thus providing nearly
complete global coverage of clouds every six hours.
