The Air Force's newest polar-orbiting weather satellite has undergone several years of  building, integrating, upgrading and testing.

DMSP will be used for strategic and tactical weather prediction to aid the U.S. military in planning operations at sea, on land, and in the air.

Unlike the civilian geostationary satellites parked 22,300 miles above Earth to focus on one region of the planet and capture the imagery of clouds seen on television weather reports, the military's DMSP satellites fly far closer to the ground and see virtually the entire globe twice daily. 

Equipped with a sophisticated sensor suite that can image visible and infrared cloud cover and measure precipitation, surface temperature, and soil moisture, the satellite collects specialized global meteorological, oceanographic, and solar-geophysical information in all weather conditions.

 According to the Air Force, two operational satellites are kept in orbit at all times.  Each completes an orbit of the Earth every 101 minutes, observing in swaths 1,860 miles.

The new satellite will be operated by the 6th Space Operations Squadron based at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado as it continues on its 500 million dollar mission to track the weather across the planet.