A polar orbit passes over or near both poles, with inclination close to 90°. As Earth rotates beneath it, the satellite's ground track sweeps the entire planet within days — the coverage pattern behind weather, imaging, and reconnaissance missions.
Understanding Polar Orbit
The geometry of global coverage
Think of the orbit as a fixed hoop and Earth spinning inside it. Each 100-minute lap, the planet rotates ~25° eastward, presenting a fresh strip of surface beneath the hoop. Successive ground tracks are therefore parallel S-curves marching westward across the map, and the spacing between them versus the sensor's swath width sets the revisit time. Constellations tune altitude to create exact repeat cycles — ground tracks that retrace themselves after N days — so change over any location is sampled on a fixed rhythm.
Who flies polar
Operational meteorology (polar weather satellites complement the geostationary fleet by seeing the poles GEO cannot), climate and land-imaging programmes, radar mappers, and reconnaissance systems. Communications constellations that promise truly global coverage also add near-polar planes, since satellites at moderate inclination never rise above the horizon at high latitudes.