Polar sun synchronous orbit

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A polar sun synchronous orbit is a nearly polar orbit. Every time it crosses the Equator, it does it at the same local time (e.g. dawn or dusk).

Sun synchronous polar orbits are often used for geographically specific monitoring, since they can observe specific locations at the same time of the day. Since shadows are supposed to be constant, any change in the image acquired reflects a real change on the ground.

See sun-synchronous orbit for detail.