Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
monit-
oring
weather and
climate
change

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p67.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p65.

p66

Mediterranean, asked Spain? Sounding data from geostationary orbit were the only way to support more frequent weather forecasts that might ameliorate the consequence of bad weather by ensuring the advanced warning of relevant authorities.

Italy argued that descoping would be counterproductive in the long run because the new series would need to meet operational needs well into the future. Surely it was not appropriate for MSG operating in the twenty-first century to be based on 1970s technology.

France queried the fact that ESA was proposing a fixed ceiling on MSG and argued that expenditure on research and development into new designs for meteorological satellites and instruments was still necessary, despite satellite meteorology having become operational. The unspoken fear was that if ESA made a fixed contribution to EUMETSAT but retained control of space development, the Organisation would be left with the bill for cost-overruns resulting from decisions over which it had no control.

Even though delegates were not entirely happy with the situation, the Council gave the ESA proposal the backing it needed to win ministerial approval for pre-Phase-A and Phase-A studies of MSG as part of the Agency's Earth Observation Preparatory Programme. The wording carefully committed EUMETSAT only to cooperation in principle to the development of mission requirements as part of preparations for the development and operation of the new satellites.

In the same Resolution, the Council asked the Director to prepare a detailed proposal during 1989 giving the cost, scale of contribution and legal basis for the programme within the EUMETSAT Convention (discussions about amending the Convention had not yet started).

For the next six months or so the two organisations walked cooperatively, with ESA taking the lead, along the usual path that leads from a concept to flight hardware. The baseline under discussion during pre-Phase-A studies was that the satellite itself would be a so-called three-axis stabilised spacecraft instead of a spinner like the first generation of Meteosats^l4. Given this type of stabilisation, the satellite could carry instruments that would fulfil the mission concept outlined in Avignon (improved imagers, sounders and small science payload).

Both the satellite and instrument concepts were advanced and risky, but it was the advanced technology that persuaded the ESA Member States to fund the project. To understand the desire to pursue novel technology for satellites it helps to understand some context. At that time, US industry had quite a lot of experience in working on three-axis stabilised satellites for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Department of Defense projects. To develop its competitiveness in the satellite business in general (for all types of application), European industry and ESA needed to develop

14 - Three-axis stabilisation and spinning are simply two methods of keeping a satellite correctly oriented in space so that its instruments point where they should. The first satellites in geostationary orbit in the 1960s were spinners. Three-axis stabilised satellites are a comparatively more difficult technology, but when satellites are above a certain size, this method of stabilisation is, for a number of complicated reasons, more advantageous than spinning.

SEE ALSO| |

1. Meteorologists shed political shackles, a review of Declan Murphy's history of the first 25 years of EUMETSAT (2011), by Helen Gavaghan.

2. An interview in 2010 with Dr Tillman Mohr, a special advisor to the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation, in Science, People & Politics.

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Contents

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

Ch.1

Ch.2

Ch.3

Ch.4

Ch.5

Ch.6

Ch.7

Ch.8

The History of EUMETSAT is available in English and French from EUMETSAT©.
First printed 2001. ISBN 92-9110-040-4

Eumetsat meteorology meteorological artificial satellites
European Space Agency weather climate policy politics history