Europe unveils hi-tech satellite to speed up severe weather warnings

CANNES, France, September 7, 2010 (FBC) Europe has unveiled the first of a 4 billion euro ($4 billion) family of satellites designed to provide early warning of the world’s most devastating weather this year.

The result of 12 years of development for the European Space Agency and 30 countries, EUMETSAT, the MTG-I1 satellite will launch into space on an Ariane 5 rocket later this year and keep a sharp eye on Europe and Africa.

The 3.8-tonne spacecraft will send back images from next year and will be joined in geostationary orbit by three more MTG-I imaging satellites and two MTG-S “sound” satellites capable of cutting through the atmosphere like a medical scanner in 2030. .

The hope is that forecasters will spend precious hours predicting the latest storms and floods that could destroy lives.

And scanning the atmosphere provides a better picture of current conditions to feed into their computerized models.

“Today there is a real challenge … to be able to calculate the original (climate) conditions,” said Hervé Roquet, deputy director of research at Meteo France.

This initiative is a continuation of the race to combat climate change caused by global warming and is estimated to cost $100 billion worldwide by 2021 alone.

While the MTG-I imaging satellites are compatible with GOES-R operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over Europe, although it has a new lightning map, MTG-S will deploy sounders in space for the first time.

European officials acknowledged that Beijing’s space program is growing rapidly, despite China’s low-precision testing of the technology, which it says has yet to come into operation.

Engineers say sounding, or scanning, catches storms before they show up on traditional radar.

“We can see the storm developing. It’s taking over and we can predict it after that,” said Paul Blythe, MTG program manager at the European Space Agency.

On Wednesday, engineers at the offshore cleanroom in France run by Franco-Italian Thales Alenia Space moved a small truck around the satellite to perform final checks before installing the solar array in the coming days.

Together with Germany’s OHB and Italy’s Leonardo, who led the project, Thales Alenia Space has logos on their protective cleanroom gowns that reflect the European system of companies participating in national investment.

“These satellites are more responsive and more capable and can follow extremely variable weather events,” said Christian Banks, Development Director at EUMETSAT.

($1 = 1.0055 EUR)

Report by Tim Heffer Editing by Mark Potter

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