Powerful sensors for weather, climate and air quality
The MetOp-SG mission is made up of six satellites that will operate in successive pairs over the next 20 years, at least. Each of the three pairs consists of an A-type and B-type satellite, which carry complementary state-of-the-art instruments to provide high-resolution measurements of temperature, precipitation, clouds and winds for weather forecasting and climate analysis.
Marc Loiselet, ESA’s Project Manager for the MetOp-SG mission, said, “It’s wonderful to know that the first in the series is now safely in orbit and we will be monitoring it very closely as part of the in-orbit verification phase. Both types of satellite are extremely complex, so, I too, would like to thank everyone who has been self in the development and its road to orbit.
Although our focus has been very much on getting MetOp-SG-A1 ready for liftoff over the last months, we also have its partner satellite, MetOp-SG-B1 on the horizon, which is set to launch next year to complete the first pair.”
MetOp-SG A1 carries six instruments: a next-generation infrared atmospheric sounder, a microwave sounder, a multispectral imaging radiometer, a novel multiviewing, multichannel, multipolarisation imager, a radio occultation sounder (which is also embarked on the MetOp-SG-B satellites), and the Copernicus Sentinel-5 spectrometer.
The type-B satellites will carry five instruments: a scatterometer, the other radio occultation sounder, a novel microwave imager, a novel ice-cloud imager, and an Argos-4 data collection system.
They are the first ESA-developed satellites to carry a system for active disposal at their mission’s end. Each MetOp-SG satellite is fitted with an extra thruster, enabling it to self-destruct in Earth’s atmosphere when the mission is complete.