Poster art of the space era

A colourful selection of posters and calendars illustrating the past three decades of ESA missions and programmes, and highlighting activities at ESOC, the European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany.

This gallery was selected from archives kept at ESOC and from a collection maintained by Klaus Lenhart, who retired from the Centre in 2000 after 37 years.

To thumbnails

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

HI-RES JPEG

HI-RES PDF

Caption:: Meteosat composite view 1993
Credits:: ESA
ID number:: SEM8DE161YF
HI-RES JPEG size:: 2231 kb
HI-RES PDF size:: 183 603 kb

Description

This poster includes a fantastic composite view created from image data gathered by Meteosat-3 and -4 on 16 May 1993.

Since 1972, Europe's Meteosat satellites have been sending pictures of the weather back to Earth for viewing by millions on daily TV weather bulletins. Their position in geostationary orbit at 0 degrees longitude has given them an unprecedented view of the weather over Europe, Africa and the eastern Atlantic. The images have contributed to an enormous improvement in the accuracy of medium-range weather forecasts over these regions.

Meteosat can lay claim to a number of firsts. Initiated in 1972 by ESA's predecessor, the European Space Research Organisation, it was the agency's first applications programme. Meteosat-1, launched in 1977, was Europe's first meteorological satellite and Meteosat-2 was launched in 1981 on one of the qualification flights of Ariane-1 from Kourou, French Guiana. Meteosat-3, the last of the pre-operational satellites, was launched in 19898 while Meteosat-4 was launched in March 1989.

In 1983, with the pre-operational programme well underway, plans were drawn up for the Meteosat Operational Programme (MOP). The decision was taken to create a new organisation, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat), to run the programme. The operational programme involved building Meteosats-4, -5 and -6 (also called MOP 1, 2 and 3) for launch in 1989, 1991 and 1993 respectively. ESA's role changed from one of development and programme definition to satellite procurement and housekeeping on behalf of Eumetsat.

Meteosat-7, the last satellite in the first-generation series, was launched in 1997. It is part of the Meteosat Transition Programme (MTP); Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) is an upgraded series of satellites employing state of the art technology, which continued the fine tradition of the first series, but with improved data gathering capabilities. MSG-1 was launched in 2002 and MSG-2 in 2005.

Meteosat-3 and -4 were controlled by ESA's Operations team from ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany.

More information: Meteosat.

Note: hi-res PDF download file is very large! Please be patient while file is transferred.

To thumbnails