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    Europe's first geostationary sounder satellite is launched (eumetsat.int)
    178 points by diggan - 17 hours ago

  • I think this is the first time I have seen the .int tld used.
    by ArneVogel - 17 hours ago
  • > "MTG-S1’s Infrared Sounder will scan nearly 2,000 thermal infrared wavelengths every 30 minutes to build vertical profiles of temperature, humidity, and trace gases. These data will be crucial for detecting fast-developing convective weather by revealing sudden shifts in instability, moisture, or wind – even before clouds begin to form."

    In other words, it is

    > "The Infrared Sounder on MTG-S1 is the first hyperspectral sounding instrument in geostationary orbit."

    https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Meteoro...

    Is there a more technical article describing this hyperspectral instrument somewhere? It sounds pretty novel.

    edit: Also, I'm now confused about the ESA's claim to be "the first", because

    > "In 2016, the Chinese Meteorological Agency (CMA) launched the Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder (GIIRS), to be the first hyperspectral sounder in geostationary orbit"

    https://www.aos.wisc.edu/aosjournal/Volume38/Loveless_PhD.pd... (PhD thesis of David M. Loveless (2021))

    by perihelions - 17 hours ago
  • Only tangentially related: I have nothing but respect for EUMETSAT and their public data store. For past work projects I've had to interface with a pretty broad sample of the world's space and/or meteorological agency's public data stores and APIs and EUMDAC (EUMETSAT's API client) was top tier. Well documented, modern, fast, and generally headache free.

    In fact, I have nothing but respect for any agency that makes free and public access to earth observation data a priority, regardless of how janky their API is.

    by themisto - 16 hours ago
  • Canada should be next.
    by st3fan - 15 hours ago
  • Naive question: what’s the benefit here to scan downward (from the satellite position) over upward, from the ground?
    by aziaziazi - 13 hours ago
  • > MTG-S1 is the first geostationary meteorological sounder satellite to fly over Europe

    I was confused for a minute on how it's both _geostationary_ and _over Europe_ -- you can't be geostationary if your orbit is not over the equator!

    Turns out[1] the MTG-S1 satellite is in fact geostationary and parked at exactly 0°00'00"N 0°00'00"E (off the coast of Ghana), 42164 km up from the center of Earth, it's just pointing at Europe at an angle.

    1 - https://space.oscar.wmo.int/satellites/view/mtg_s1

    by abra0 - 12 hours ago

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