Last view of MetOp-B as it is eased into the rocket fairing for launch on Sep. 17, 2012.
Photo: ESA

[Via Satellite 10-18-13] The French Space Agency (CNES) has awarded Astrium a €230 million contract to provide next-generation Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI-NG) instruments for Europe‘s Meteorological Satellite Agency (EUMETSAT)’s future MetOp-SG satellites. The instruments will provide atmospheric temperature and humidity data with twice the accuracy of the previous generation.

The IASI-NG instruments will be part of the state-of-the-art instrumentation carried by the MetOp Second Generation (MetOp-SG) satellites, which constitute the space segment of the EUMETSAT Polar System Second Generation (EPS-SG). The prototype satellites are developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and will be operated by EUMETSAT. The first generation EUMETSAT Polar System, which includes two Astrium-built MetOp satellites that are now in orbit, contributes some 40 percent of the satellite data used in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.