The first Meteosat Third Generation Sounder (MTG-S1), with the Copernicus Sentinel-4 instrument on board, arrived at Cape Canaveral harbour, US, on 6 May.
Transported on board the cargo ship MN Colibri, the two-week voyage from Bremen across the Atlantic Ocean began on 23 April.
MTG-S1’s sounder will be first hyperspectral sounding instrument to be placed in geostationary orbit by a European-led mission. It will be positioned about 36 000 km above the equator and will maintain its position relative to Earth, following the same area on the planet’s surface as it rotates below. It will provide coverage of Europe and part of northern Africa on a repeat cycle of 15 minutes, providing meteorologists with a complete weather picture of the region, complementing data on cloud formation and lightning from its sibling MTG-I.
The MTG-S1 satellite hosts the Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission which is an ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared light spectrometer that captures data every hour to monitor air quality and pollution over Europe and North Africa.
Read full story: MTG-S1 and Sentinel-4 take a step closer to space