The European Space Agency (ESA) says the second Meteosat Third Generation Imager satellite, MTG-I2, has been launched on board an Ariane 6 rocket, completing the first three-satellite Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) system intended to improve weather forecasting over Europe and northern Africa.
ESA said the launch took place on Thursday, 27 August, at 22:11 CEST (17:11 local time) from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Ariane 6 flight VA270. The satellite separated from the launcher and communication was established with the Malindi ground station, ESA said.
The MTG programme is designed to deliver more frequent and higher-resolution observations to support forecasting and monitoring of the atmosphere and climate. ESA said MTG-I2 will provide images of the atmosphere over Europe and northern Africa every 2.5 minutes, supporting early warning reliability and assisting in tracking wildfires and atmospheric pollution.
ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Simonetta Cheli, said, “My congratulations go to all the teams involved who have ensured the successful development of this mission. MTG-I2 brings advanced satellite technology that will improve climate monitoring and weather forecasts over Europe, offering real benefits to citizens and communities across our continent. I’d like to extend my gratitude to the European partners and industry who achieved this success through hard work, outstanding expertise and collaboration.”
James Champion, ESA’s MTG Project Manager, said, “After years of development and the past few months of intense launch preparations, it’s fantastic to see MTG-I2 being launched and on its way to take its place in the three-satellite system. Our team’s work is not over yet – we still have engineers and personnel in operations and ground systems who will be ensuring the spacecraft remains on track over the coming weeks and months. But for now, we are all elated that the launch has gone well and we look forward to the coming two weeks or so of orbit-raising manoeuvres during the launch and early operations phase, and then afterwards when the commissioning will begin.”
ESA said the MTG constellation now has three satellites in orbit. The earlier two satellites have been commissioned and handed over to Eumetsat for operational service, with MTG-I2 expected to provide continuity and resilience once it completes commissioning and the system begins operating at full capacity.
MTG-I2 will operate in geostationary orbit at an altitude of about 36,000 km. ESA said it carries two imaging instruments: the Flexible Combined Imager, which will provide rapid scanning over Europe with observations every 2.5 minutes, and a Lightning Imager that can capture individual lightning events day and night for short-term forecasting and “nowcasting”.
Once all three satellites are operating together, ESA said the mission will also support development of a “weather cube” product combining Imager and Sounder data to create three-dimensional representations of atmospheric conditions including lightning, winds, internal cloud dynamics and gases such as greenhouse gases and air pollutants.
ESA described the flight as the ninth launch of Ariane 6 and the first to deliver a satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. The agency said the next steps for MTG-I2 include deploying solar arrays, activating attitude control systems, and conducting a series of orbit-raising manoeuvres before commissioning begins.
ESA said the MTG satellites were developed by ESA and built by a consortium led by Thales Alenia Space with OHB System and Leonardo as main partners. Eumetsat will operate the satellites after commissioning and distribute the data, ESA said. ESA added that Arianespace was the launch service provider for flight VA270.