Solutions

Mission

For more than 40 years, ESA has been building Europe’s orbital weather satellites: the Meteosat series of geostationary spacecraft, the first of which was launched in 1977. The success of the early Meteosats led to the creation of the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, Eumetsat, in 1986. ESA and Eumetsat continued to work together on the second generation of satellite, designed to deliver continuous weather images to European forecasters on an operational basis. The MSG series guaranteed continuity of service through to around 2021. Then Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) should take over ..

They were all launched on an Ariane 5 from the same launch site – Europe’s Space port at Kourou in French Guiana.

The MSG satellites continually return detailed imagery of Europe, the North Atlantic and Africa every 15 minutes, for operational use by meteorologists. GERB data are forwarded to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK, for processing.

OIP’s Participation

OIP, as a subcontractor to AMOS [B], was responsible for the design and development of the telescope optics of the GERB instrument as part of the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) missions. OIP has delivered 4 GERB telescopes. All missions have been successfully launched and in operation.

Status

OIP has delivered 4 GERB telescopes covering for MSG missions. All missions have been successfully launched and in operation.

The heavy-lift launcher Ariane-5 places the 4 two-tonne MSG satellites in an initial ‘parking’ or geostationary transfer orbit. This is a highly elliptical (or elongated) orbit intermediate between geostationary and low-Earth orbit (LEO), with an apogee of approximately 35 944 km and a perigee of just 580 km.

Meteosat-8 (MSG-1) launch : 28 Aug 2002  → Retired
Meteosat-9 (MSG-2) launch : 21 Dec 2005 → Retired
Meteosat-10 (MSG-3) launch : 5 Jul 2012 → Retired
Meteosat-11 (MSG-4) launch : 15 Jul 2015 → Operational

Meteosat-11 will ensure the smooth transition to Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) in 2021.

Partners

The GERB instrument has been designed, developed and manufactured by an International Consortium led by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), Didcot, UK.
Consortium members: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (ICSTM), London (Leicester University, UK); AEA Technology (UK); Galileo Avionica (Italy); AMOS (Liège, Belgium) and the Royal Meteorological Office (RMIB) (Brussels, Belgium).

OIP was subcontractor to AMOS [B].