POES Polar Weather Satellite 3D Model

A Polar Operational Environmental Satellite (POES), from the NOAA polar-orbiting series that has collected data for most of the past 50 years, building a long record of the whole planet's weather. The model shows the long body with a bronze equipment module covered in round four-bladed louvres, helix antennas on lattice masts, an angled shade at one end and a large single solar array on a tilted boom.

Technical details: about 123,000 polygons and 369,000 vertices, with 19 colour materials and no image textures. The count is dense, so decimate before mobile or VR use. It is scaled to 5 metres for AiZity's catalogue scale.

The download includes GLB for web viewers and three.js, FBX for Unity, Unreal Engine and Maya, OBJ as a widely supported mesh, and BLEND for Blender. AiZity cleaned up the original (centred, grounded and renamed the parts) and converted it to these formats.

Good for weather and climate lessons, polar orbit explainers, meteorology broadcasts and Earth observation animations.

License: Public domain, made by NASA/Christopher R. Meaney (a U.S. government work). Free for personal and commercial use; please credit NASA. NASA logos and insignia are not included, and use must not suggest NASA endorsement.