Last Updated: 11/23/2011*

Raytheon Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) has taken its first image aboard the recently launched NASA National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project spacecraft. The visible spectrum image shows the East Coast of the United States, from Canada’s Hudson Bay past Florida to the northern coast of Venezuela.

VIIRS is the primary Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) instrument responsible for global imagery, land and sea surface temperature monitoring, cloud characterization and other key environmental data. It is also one of five instruments onboard the NPOESS Preparatory Project satellite — known as NPP — that launched Oct. 28 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NPP has reached its final orbit at an altitude of 512 miles (824 kilometers), powered on all instruments and is traveling around the Earth at 16,640 miles per hour (eight kilometers per second).

As the largest instrument onboard NPP, VIIRS will collect radiometric imagery in visible and infrared wavelengths of the Earth's land, atmosphere and oceans. VIIRS weighs approximately 556 pounds (252 kilograms), and its data, collected from 22 channels across the electromagnetic spectrum, will be used to observe the Earth's surface including fires, ice, ocean color, vegetation, clouds, and land and sea surface temperatures.

NPP serves as a bridge mission from NASA's Earth Observing System of satellites to the next-generation JPSS, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program that will also collect weather and climate data. NASA Goddard manages the NPP mission for the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The JPSS program provides the NPP ground system and NOAA provides operational support.