Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
monit-
oring
weather and
climate
change

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p83.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p81.

p82.

ological point of view, becoming more urgent. Morgan told the sixth Council meeting in December 1987 that IPOMS was pressing EUMETSAT to make its intentions clear. The PAC and the STG stepped up their efforts to determine a policy and a technological framework for polar orbiting systems. Whilst these two groups went about their work in early 1988, it was becoming clear that as a result of its own internal processes ESA was considering abandoning its plans for a large multidisciplinary polar platform to be serviced by astronauts.

Instead of the "man-tended" option, the Agency was considering a series of four modular platforms based on a design similar to SPOT-4. Two satellites, launched in 1997 and 2003, would carry a joint meteorological-oceanic-climate mission, whilst the remaining two would carry instruments to observe the land.

EUMETSAT was greatly relieved by the Agency's apparent intention to abandon in-orbit servicing, because the move reduced the cost and technological risk. EUMETSAT also found a series of four satellites attractive because of the potential for regular launches that would offer data continuity and so protect the operational mission.

Other perceived advantages of ESA's new plan were the potential for shared costs, shared access to related data, and the option to test research instruments, which if proven could become operational. Not that everything was rosy from the perspective of EUMETSAT. A launch in 1997 meant that there could be a gap in global satellite data from polar orbit from 1995 onwards. And, though ESA was considering the option of a four-satellite series, the new scenario was still only tentative and the Agency had not yet fully abandoned its earlier preference for a large multidisciplinary polar platform. In addition, only two of the series of four were envisaged as platforms for a meteorological payload.

Conscious of this uncertainty, the PAC recommended that EUMETSAT continue to clarify its own mission requirements whilst waiting six months to see what decisions the Agency would make about satellites/platforms. In the meantime the PAC requested the Director to write to the Director-General of ESA, telling him of EUMETSAT's interest in polar satellite systems, but stressing the need for data continuity.

By June 1988 an issue which it was thought had been settled was once more under discussion. ESA was again open to the idea of large polar platforms rather than a series, according to Bizzarro Bizzarri, the Italian delegate, who was also Chairman of EUMETSAT's STG and a member of the ESA Programme Board for Earth Observation (PB-EO). Delegates at the eighth Council meeting concluded that as matters then stood EUMETSAT should enter into cooperation with ESA only if there was a guarantee that a series of satellites would fly.

At this meeting, delegates passed two Resolutions that were significant both for EUMETSAT's development as a whole and for the Organisation's polar orbiting system.

One Resolution concerning future satellite programmes applied to both MSG and polar systems, while the second was related solely to the preparation of polar systems. The Resolution on future systems committed EUMETSAT to

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

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