POLarization and Directionality of the Earth's Reflectances The French space agency, CNES, has developed the POLDER instrument, which flew on ADEOS (ADvanced Earth Observation Satellite), developed by the Japanese space agency, JAXA. This was the first French/Japanese cooperative project in the area of Earth observation. A second, identical instrument flew on ADEOS-2, successor to ADEOS, until October 2003.