The Polar Orbiting Environmental satellites consist of a polar orbiter series of satellites from TIROS-N, NOAA-6 through NOAA-14. The POES system includes the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Tiros Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS).

The Polar Orbiting Environmental series of satellites commenced with TIROS-N (launched in October 1978) and continued with NOAA-A (launched in June 1979 and renamed NOAA-6), NOAA-C (launched in June 1981 and renamed NOAA-7), NOAA-E (launched in March 1983 and renamed NOAA-8), NOAA-F (launched in December 1984 and renamed NOAA-9), NOAA-G (launched in September 1986 and renamed NOAA-10), NOAA-H (launched in September 1988 and renamed NOAA-11), NOAA-D (launched in May 1991 and renamed NOAA-12), NOAA-I (launched in August 1993 and renamed NOAA-13) and NOAA-J (launched in December 1994 and renamed NOAA-14).

The POES satellite system offers the advantage of daily global coverage, by making nearly polar orbits roughly 14.1 times daily. Since the number of orbits per day is not an integer the sub orbital tracks do not repeat on a daily basis, although the local solar time of each satellite's passage is essentially unchanged for any latitude. The POES system includes the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Tiros Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS).

Because of the polar orbiting nature of the POES series satellites, these satellites are able to collect global data on a daily basis for a variety of land, ocean, and atmospheric applications. Data from the POES series supports a broad range of environmental monitoring applications including weather analysis and forecasting, climate research and prediction, global sea surface temperature measurements, atmospheric soundings of temperature and humidity, ocean dynamics research, volcanic eruption monitoring, forest fire detection, global vegetation analysis, search and rescue, and many other applications.