VIIRS aboard Suomi NPP captured an image of Super Typhoon Sinlaku at about 03:30 UTC on 13 April 2026.
Libera follows the heritage of the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments, which began flying on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission in 1997 and later flew on Terra, Aqua, Suomi NPP, and NOAA 20.
NOAA used measurements of aerosol optical depth from VIIRS on NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP to estimate numbers of people exposed to PM2.5 by Air Quality Index level for 2023-06-03–10, 2023.
NOAA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP satellites estimated that more than 17 million people in major cities such as New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. were breathing Very Unhealthy air during the early-June 2023 event.
NOAA’s LEO program includes the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), NOAA-20, NOAA-21, and the JPSS-3 and JPSS-4 missions, as well as other leveraged missions and partnerships.
The L3Harris CrIS instrument will fly on all five JPSS satellites: Suomi-NPP (launched 2011), JPSS-1 (launched 2017), JPSS-2 (2022), JPSS-3 (approximately 2026), and JPSS-4 (approximately 2031).
Ball Aerospace’s Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) instruments are operating on the Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 satellites launched in 2011 and 2017, respectively.
Ball Aerospace built the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite that launched in 2011.
NOAA-21 (JPSS-2) will join NOAA-20 and Suomi NPP in providing weather data from polar orbit.
Suomi NPP was launched with enough propellant to maintain its orbit for at least 10.5 years plus extra fuel to deorbit over the Pacific Ocean.
NOAA upgraded its Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting computer model for the 2020 hurricane season to ingest data from GOES-16 and GOES-17 as well as NOAA-20, Suomi NPP, Himawari-8, Metop spacecraft, and COSMIC-2.
JPSS-1 (now NOAA-20) and Suomi NPP provide two polar satellites with comparable performance for NOAA.