During World War II it was noted that radar measurements over the oceans contained noise or “sea clutter”. It wasn’t until the 1960's that this noise was related to wind velocity. Scatterometers are microwave radar sensors that were developed to measure this type of backscattering from an aircraft or a satellite.

Scatterometers were first flown in space on board the Skylab missions in 1973 and 1974. In 1978, the Seasat-A Satellite Scatterometer (SASS) was flown on the Seasat-A satellite. However, due to a malfunction the mission only lasted four months. The European Space Agency flew a Scatterometer (SCAT) onboard its European Remote Sensing Satellite-1 (ERS-1) in 1991. Data was gathered for an 8-year period but coverage was limited due to the design of the scatterometer. In 1998, The NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) was launched onboard the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS-I) and provided 90% coverage of the ocean areas within a 2-day period until the satellite lost power in 1997.

The Quick Scatterometer Satellite (QuikSCAT) carrying the SeaWinds Scatterometer was launched in June, 1999 to fill the gap created when NSCAT data was no longer available. QuikSCAT provides complete coverage of the world’s ocean surface every two days. Due to the success of NSCAT and QuikSCAT another SeaWinds Scatterometer on the ADEOS-II Satellite was launched in December 2002. Unfortunately, the ADEOS-II satellite malunctioned and the SeaWinds Scatterometer was never able to be used operationally.