Meteosat Weather Satellite Arrives at French Guiana Launch Site
After a two-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the ship transporting the first Meteosat Third Generation satellite recently docked at Pariacabo in French Guiana and the cargo unloaded. Now safe and sound in one of the spaceport’s cleanrooms, satellite engineers will ready it for liftoff on an Ariane 5 rocket in December. Once in geostationary orbit, this new satellite, which carries two new extremely sensitive instruments, promises to further bolster Europe's leadership in weather forecasting.
"The team was thrilled to see the ship arrive safely at the port and soon got down to the task of transporting the precious cargo to the airlock at the launch site."
James Champion, ESA’s MTG-I1 launch campaign manager.
The first Meteosat Third Generation Imager, MTG-I1, along with 10 large containers of support equipment left the south of France on the MN Toucan cargo ship in late September bound for the Pariacabo port in Kourou, French Guiana.
"The team was thrilled to see the ship arrive safely at the port and soon got down to the task of transporting the precious cargo to the airlock at the launch site," said James Champion, ESA’s MTG-I1 launch campaign manager. "Here, the team cleaned the satellite container before it was moved to the cleanroom where the MTG-I1 satellite was finally rolled out of the container.
“We were equally thrilled to see that recordings of temperature, humidity, shocks and sea swell showed our satellite had had a very comfortable two weeks at sea.”
Now that this all-new weather satellite is safe in the cleanroom, engineers will carry out further checks and embark on getting it ready for liftoff.
Six Meteosat Satellites Will Make Up the MTG System
MTG-I1 is the first of six Meteosat satellites that form the full MTG system, which will provide critical data for weather forecasting over the next 20 years. In full operations, the mission will comprise two MTG-I satellites and one MTG Sounding (MTG-S) satellites working in tandem. The remaining satellites will eventually replace those in the first set to ensure the continuity of data for at least two decades.
The MTG mission follows on from the success of the first and second generation of Meteosat satellites, but will offer higher-resolution data more quickly and some completely new data to boot. The MTG-I satellites carry two completely new instruments to deliver high-quality data to improve weather forecasts: a Flexible Combined Imager and Europe’s first Lightning Imager.
The Flexible Combined Imager has more spectral channels and is capable of imaging in higher resolution compared to the current Meteosat Second Generation’s Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared instrument. The Lightning Imager offers a completely new capability for European meteorological satellites. It will continuously monitor more than 80% of the Earth disc for lightning discharges, taking place either between clouds or between clouds and the ground.
This new instrument will allow severe storms to be detected in their early stages and will therefore be key for issuing timely warnings. Its detectors are so sensitive that they will be able to detect relatively weak lightning, even in full daylight.
The Meteosat MTG-I satellites also carry two smaller payloads for data collection from remote science beacons and for search and rescue by detecting emergency beacons. With liftoff slated for December, MTG-I1 is set to be the trailblazer of this extraordinary new mission.
(Images provided with ESA news release)