At a meeting of participants on 12 December 1997, ESA Member States took a major step forward concerning the METOP Programme by declaring it started and, subject to an adequate commitment by EUMETSAT in January confirmed their intention to proceed with industrial activities. The relevant budgets were approved, but blocked pending the EUMETSAT decision.
Subsequently, on 28 January 1998, the EUMETSAT Council made very
positive decisions, in particular with respect to the financial
commitments towards the METOP-1 project.
Resulting from this, two days later on Friday 30 January, the ESA Earth
Observation Programme Board gave its final go-ahead on the 1997 and 1998
budgets, thereby releasing the industrial work.
Consequently, ESA and EUMETSAT have now released an Authorisation To
Proceed, to the European industry for an initial amount of 115 Million
ECU’s (90 from ESA and 25 from EUMETSAT) allowing all planned activities
to start on the METOP spacecraft.
The foreseen tasks include at present procurement of long lead equipment
items and start of work by all contractors. These activities will run
until end of September 1998, by which time the release of the full EPS
Programme is anticipated by the EUMETSAT Council.
The instruments on METOP will produce high-resolution images, vertical
temperature and humidity profiles, and temperatures of the land and
ocean surface on a global basis. Also on board the satellites will be
instruments for monitoring ozone and wind flow over the oceans. This
instrument payload will be of significant value to meteorologists and
other scientists, particularly those studying the global climate. In
addition to benefits to weather forecasting and climate studies from the
EPS system, there will be a contribution to high quality employment
opportunities in the European space industry.
The first launch is planned for 2003 as part of an international joint
system in cooperation with the USA.
METOP is a series of three meteorological operational polar orbiting
satellites, the first of which, METOP-1 is the prototype.
EPS stands for EUMETSAT Polar System, which comprises the space
segment, launches and operations during 14 years related to the METOP
satellites. It is planned to be implemented in cooperation with ESA,
CNES (the french national space center) and NOAA (the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
