Building on the long-standing partnership between ESA and Eumetsat, and the success of both the first generation of Meteosat missions and the subsequent Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) series, Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) is set to take over the reins of providing weather data from geostationary orbit. This third generation of weather satellites not only guarantees the continuity of data for weather forecasting from geostationary orbit for the next two decades, but also offers significant enhancement of the current capabilities.

The MTG mission comprises two types of satellite: four MTG-Imagers and two MTG-Sounders. The animation here shows a technical view of the MTG-Imager satellite.

The MTG-Imager satellites carry the Flexible Combined Imager instrument which is natural successor of the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVRI) carried on the current Meteosat Second Generation satellites. Where SEVRI has 12 spectral channels, the Flexible Combined Imager has 16 channels. It operates at wavelengths between 0.3 and 13.3 microns, and has a spatial resolution of 1–2 km delivering a full image of Earth every 10 minutes. In addition it can operate in a ‘high spatial resolution fast imagery’ mode, which can ‘zoom in’ on smaller areas of the Earth disc with four spectral channels, but with increased spatial resolution (to 0.5 km) and delivering data images of selected regions every 2.5 minutes.

The MTG-Imager satellites also carry the Lightning Imager which provides continuous monitoring of more than 80% of the Earth disc for detecting lightning discharges taking place either between clouds or from cloud and ground.