Flight 207: Ariane 5 ECA/Echostar-17 - Astrium - EADS

Data relating to Flight 207
To produce maps and enable weather forecasts to be made, the Meteosat satellites are
equipped with a radiometer called SEVIRI (Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra Red Imager).
This imaging instrument, designed and built by Astrium, “sees” climatic phenomena in the
visible and infrared, over one third of the globe’s surface (MSG-3 will “see” a zone ranging
approximately from the North Pole to the South Pole and from Chile to India). This is the
tenth radiometer of the Meteosat constellation, the first examples of which operated for up to 19
years in space. Since the first model entered service, SEVIRI has been the world’s benchmark
instrument for the design of the next generation of radiometers. It is the most efficient meteorological
instrument in orbit.
SEVIRI offers some major technological advances over
the first generation Meteosat radiometers. It is capable
of detecting 12 spectral bands instead of three, providing
even more detailed observations. It offers a level of
resolution three times greater than that of the previous
radiometers (up to one kilometre), allowing on-demand
close-ups of local climatic phenomena. Finally, SEVIRI
is capable of scanning the surface of the Earth in just
15 minutes, as opposed to 30 minutes for the previous
generation.
EADS Astrium produced the image processing system (IMPF) which provides the link between
the SEVIRI instrument and the end-user. This required development, testing and installation of
this software on the Eumetsat ground station in Darmstadt, Germany. Moreover, EADS Astrium
is responsible for training the Eumetsat engineers and will handle maintenance of the
software for two years following delivery.
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