Europe’s all-new weather satellite arrives at launch site

After a two-week voyage throughout the Atlantic Ocean, the ship transporting the primary Meteosat Third Era satellite docked at Pariacabo in French Guiana and the valuable cargo unloaded. Now secure and sound in one of many spaceport’s cleanrooms, satellite engineers will prepared it for liftoff on an Ariane 5 rocket in December. As soon as in geostationary orbit, this new satellite, which carries two new extraordinarily delicate devices, guarantees to additional bolster Europe’s management in climate forecasting.

The primary Meteosat Third Era Imager, MTG-I1, together with 10 giant containers of help gear left the south of France on the MN Toucan cargo ship on 29 September certain for the Pariacabo port in Kourou, French Guiana.

James Champion, ESA’s MTG-I1 launch marketing campaign supervisor, stated, “The crew was thrilled to see the ship arrive safely on the port and shortly bought all the way down to the duty of transporting the valuable cargo to the airlock at launch website. Right here, the crew cleaned the satellite container earlier than it was moved to the cleanroom the place the MTGI-1 satellite was lastly rolled out of the container.

“We had been equally thrilled to see that recordings of temperature, humidity, shocks and sea swell confirmed our satellite had had a really comfy two weeks at sea.”

Now that this all-new climate satellite is secure within the cleanroom, engineers will perform of additional checks and embark on getting it prepared for liftoff.

MTG-I1 is the primary of six satellites that kind the total MTG system, which can present essential knowledge for climate forecasting over the subsequent 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 ultimately change these within the first set to make sure the continuity of knowledge for not less than 20 years.

The MTG mission follows on from the success of the primary and second technology of Meteosat satellites, however will supply higher-resolution knowledge extra rapidly and a few utterly new knowledge in addition.

The MTG-I satellites carry two utterly new devices to ship high-quality knowledge to enhance weather forecasts: a Versatile Mixed Imager and Europe’s first Lightning Imager.

The Versatile Mixed Imager has extra spectral channels and is able to imaging in greater decision in comparison with present Meteosat Second Era’s Spinning Enhanced Seen and Infrared instrument.

The Lightning Imager affords a very new functionality for European meteorological satellites. It can constantly monitor greater than 80% of the Earth disk for lightning discharges, going down both between clouds or between clouds and the bottom.

This new instrument will enable severe storms to be detected of their early phases and can due to this fact be key for issuing well timed warnings. Its detectors are so delicate that may be capable to detect comparatively weak lightning, even in full daylight.

The MTG-I satellites additionally carry two smaller payloads for knowledge assortment from distant science beacons and for search and rescue by detecting emergency beacons.

With liftoff slated for December, MTG-I1 is about to be the path blazer of this extraordinary new mission.

MTG is a cooperation between ESA and Eumetsat. ESA is chargeable for the definition and implementation of the MTG satellites and procurement of recurrent {hardware}, whereas Eumetsat is accountable for working the spacecraft all through their lifetime.