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Meteosat Third Generation (MTG-I1)

MTG-I1 (Meteosat Third Generation – Imager) is the first Third Generation satellite of Meteosat - the geostationary weather satellite mission from EUMETSAT. 

Background

In total, MTG consists of four imaging satellites (MTG-I1 to MTG-I4) and two sounding satellites (MTG-S1 and MTG-S2), which will be launched within the next 15 years. 

MTG-I1’s overall objective is to provide meteorological information, mainly over Europe and Africa in order to support weather forecasting and climate monitoring. This mission is facilitated by two novel instruments, the Flexible Combined Imager (FCI) and the Lightning Imager (LI). 

Customer's Challenge

In order to address the steadily increasing needs from the user communities, the MTG satellites deploy new architectures, products, and resolutions, compared to the previous Meteosat satellites. However, this necessitates the development of new systems, software, and tools for the ground segment. Performance monitoring of the MTG instruments during the commissioning phase and throughout the instrument lifetimes is one important aspect to ensure the high quality of the instruments and their data products.

 

Data flow from data acquisition, data processing to data dissemination. Telespazio Germany´s “Satellite Imager Offline Tools Development Service” supports EUMETSAT in the operational calibration and monitoring of instrument performances and data products.

© Telespazio Germany

Our Approach

Within our current Offline Tools Development Service, Telespazio Germany is actively involved in EUMETSAT’s activities towards monitoring instrument performance and data product quality for their fleet of operational meteorological satellites. Our role is to develop, apply and evaluate tools that will run operationally at EUMETSAT´s facilities and assess the geometric and radiometric performances of current and upcoming optical sensors. 

The MTG programme is one of our main targeted missions, for which we are supporting the Remote Sensing Products Division (RSP) at EUMETSAT in calibration and validation activities for the FCI instrument (and partially also for LI) during payload commissioning and near-real-time operations.

Our fundamental guideline is to maintain a close, constructive, and well-received collaboration within our project team at Telespazio Germany, with our project partner Telespazio France and, of course, with our customer EUMETSAT. Based on that, we focus on fostering synergies between the various tools and aspects within the project in order to improve timeliness, reusability, and cost efficiency.
 

Our Solutions

During the critical test phases before the launch of MTG-I1 in December 2022, our performance monitoring tools have successfully withstood all formal test procedures and have proven to be ready-to-use and fit-for-purpose for the current commissioning phase. 

Drawing on our experience from the MTG-I1 commissioning, we designed our monitoring tools to extend towards multi-mission tools. This approach optimizes development times and creates synergies for other existing and also future missions at EUMETSAT. In particular, we currently provide support for ongoing operational missions (Sentinel-3), establish connections with well-established sensors (e.g. SEVIRI, IASI and AVHRR) and prepare for upcoming satellite missions (EPS-SG, MTG-S). 

Benefits for Our Costumer

Since July 2020, Telespazio Germany has been providing this scientific software development service to EUMETSAT RSP. We thus support EUMETSAT in meeting the requirements of their operational satellite missions and in ensuring the highest data quality for the next-generation of weather and climate observations from space.

This has been successfully demonstrated by MTG-I1. There have been many achievements, and with more exciting challenges up to come, it will contribute to paving the way for future missions and activities. 

Why Telespazio

Telespazio Germany has an extensive record of accomplishments of software development in the domain of Payload Data Processing for Earth Observation missions – in cooperation with our main customers - EUMETSAT and ESA. Our versatile team of software engineers and remote sensing scientists offers a broad expertise in the area of remote sensing, scientific algorithm development and satellite data processing concepts for large datasets.

By further collaboration with Telespazio France in our consortium, we leverage from specific expertise expanding across Telespazio Group. Meanwhile, the significant pool of qualified engineers from Telespazio Group increases our flexibility and scalability of services to adapt to our customers’ evolving needs. 

Telespazio Germany’s proximity to EUMETSAT enables us to provide flexible on-site support and an efficient interaction with other technical teams and stakeholders at EUMETSAT.

Our Solution

DIDIT