Meteorology, Meteorological, History

An IGO
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HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p54.

HISTORY OF EUMETSAT, p52.

p53.

found the Agency's policy statement helpful. Nevertheless, they made no recommendations about what the Organisation's own space segment policies should be, preferring to wait until "more progress was made on future programmes". What the Committee really meant was that ESA's Council was due to meet at ministerial level and they did not wish to recommend any course of action until ESA's official policy with respect to Earth observation, including meteorological satellites, was confirmed one way or another.

The ground segment debate was equally contentious, but this was more of an internal debate between delegations about how to implement a ground segment, not whether EUMETSAT should do so (see chapter 5).

Eventually, however, at the eighteenth Council meeting in March 1992, EUMETSAT was ready to formally adopt a Resolution on Long-Term Management Policy. To enable the Council to reach this point, two things had happened. ESA's political masters had clarified the Agency's Earth observation goals. Secondly, EUMETSAT's delegates had set aside their differences about how to implement a ground segment in order to allow themselves to make a decision about EUMETSAT's strategic role in relationship to the ground segment of meteorological satellites.

The Resolution on Long-Term Management Policy says:

· The EUMETSAT Council shall define the space segment of new satellite systems, such as Meteosat Second Generation and the EUMETSAT Polar System.

· ESA shall be requested to develop a prototype under an ESA development programme and to prove in orbit that the satellite meets EUMETSAT's requirements.

· EUMETSAT may contribute to the ESA development programme with a fixed contribution.

· EUMETSAT shall take overall responsibility for the space segment after in-orbit commissioning of a prototype.

· EUMETSAT shall define the requirements for a ground segment.

· EUMETSAT shall establish the ground segment under its own responsibility and decide on the location of its elements.

· The Secretariat shall act as the design authority for the ground segment and exercise managerial control.

· EUMETSAT shall base all procurement decisions on open tender.

These policy statements underpin all EUMETSAT's subsequent programmes, including those that will define the Organisation in the next decades, namely the MSG programme (see chapter 6) and the EPS (see chapter 7). Further, they are the basis for EUMETSAT's decisions about the ground segment for its programmes, including the MTP (see chapter 5).

No sooner was the long-term management strategy decided than delegates had to return to programmatic details. The most pressing issue, a consequence of the fact that EUMETSAT's contract with ESA for satellite operations was fast running out, was the ground segment. As ever, the devil was in the detail. Yet delegates eventually developed a new concept - the Satellite Application Facility - that

SEE ALSO| |

1. Meteorologists shed political shackles, a review of Declan Murphy's history of the first 25 years of EUMETSAT (2011), by Helen Gavaghan.

2. An interview in 2010 with Dr Tillman Mohr, a special advisor to the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organisation, in Science, People & Politics.

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Contents

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

Ch.1

Ch.2

Ch.3

Ch.4

Ch.5

Ch.6

Ch.7

Ch.8

The History of EUMETSAT is available in English and French from EUMETSAT©.
First printed 2001. ISBN 92-9110-040-4

Eumetsat meteorology meteorological artificial satellites
European Space Agency weather climate policy politics history