In this study, an overview of the Earth Observing System (EOS) program is provided with discussions on its spacecrafts and instruments, and on the scientific issues. The EOS satellites aim at monitoring the Earth environmental system by observing parameters of subsystems such as atmosphere, ocean, land, and biosphere. The first EOS flagship, Terra, was launched on December 1999. Five instruments onboard Terra can measure cloud and aerosol properties, radiation, terrestrial surface, and ocean color. The second EOS flagship, Aqua, which was launched on May 2002, loads six instruments that measure clouds, radiation, precipitation, terrestrial surface, ocean color and sea surface temperature. The observational data available from the EOS satellites may complement data from the Communication-Oceanography-Meteorology satellite, which will be launched in 2008, for meteorological and environmental forecasts.