Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
monit-
oring
weather and
climate
change

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p79.
Pages 77 and 78 carry tables.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p75.

p76.

was fresh and, on the face of things, attractive.

At the first meeting of IPOMS everyone suggested what their national contribution might be to an international meteorological mission in polar orbit. Speaking for the Agency, Regis Tessier said that until full funding was available for the Meteosat Operational Programme (MOP), additional support for a meteorological satellite within the framework of ESA would be difficult to justify^l6. Nevertheless, polar orbiting satellites had been discussed in Europe, and the Agency's Long Term Plan included a proposal for a satellite to be launched in the mid-1990s that would make oceanic and meteorological observations.

Italy, Germany, Norway, France and the UK presented national plans. Of these countries, only France and the UK had practical experience developing instruments for NOAA's polar orbiting satellites. Both countries said any future additional involvement in polar orbiting systems would be through contributions coordinated at European level. They were, of course, referring obliquely to EUMETSAT.

The national presentations show the roots of some of the instruments planned for the satellites of the current UPS (compare tables 5 and 6, pages 77 and 78). Although details of the technology have evolved in the years since that meeting, the concept and rationale for the ideas remain unchanged. That consistency of concept demonstrates the fundamental significance to operational meteorology of the polar orbiting satellite mission objectives.

During the next 18 months, while the founding members of EUMETSAT were one by one ratifying the Organisation's Convention, the Space Station with its attendant polar platforms came to dominate space policy in the USA and in Europe. For the first six and a half years of EUMETSAT's existence, the polar platforms dominated the Organisation's debate about meteorological observation from polar orbit. It is, therefore, worth stepping back a little from meteorology to look at the bigger picture and at the forces which were then shaping space policy within NASA and ESA. In the early 1980s, NASA was still driven by ideas from the pioneering days of the space age when Werner von Braun and other visionaries envisaged permanent outposts in space occupied by and serviced by astronauts. Not surprisingly, when NASA sought a focus for its manned programme in the post-Apollo era of the early 1980s, the Agency came up with the idea of the Space Station and platforms, and Europe willingly participated.

In other words, strong ideological forces were at work and, through ESA's adoption of the polar platform concept, the ideas affected EUMETSAT once the Organisation came into existence.

With the vision in place, the agencies looked for "customers". Seemingly the polar platforms could provide an ideal flight opportunity for meteorological instruments and offer the meteorological community cost savings. "Seemingly" because closer examination of the concept was to prove it to be impractical.

(Go to page 79)

16 - At the time MOP was funded only to 85 per cent. Making up the shortfall was one of EUMETSAT's earliest items of business. In addition, the Avignon meeting had endorsed a follow-on mission in geostationary not polar orbit.

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.

eChapter| |TOP

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