Ariane 6 to launch MetOp-SG-A1 satellite on second commercial mission

12 August at 21:37 local time (13 August, 02:37 CEST), Ariane 6, operated by Arianespace, will lift off from
Europe’s spaceport at the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) carrying the MetOp-SG-A1 (Second Generation A1)
Earth-observation satellite for the European Meteorological Satellite Organisation (Eumetsat), built by
Airbus Defence & Space under contract to the European Space Agency (ESA). The launch will be the third
in 2025 from the CSG and the third for Europe’s new Ariane 6 launcher, which will be flying its second
commercial mission. MetOp-SG-A1 will be placed into Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of approximately 800 kilometres.
MetOp-SG-A1 is the first in the European MetOp Second Generation series of weather satellites. It will
ensure continuity of vital global observations from polar orbit, affording more accurate weather forecasts
than the first-generation MetOp satellites and deeper insights into Earth’s atmosphere and changing climate than ever before. MetOp-SG-A1 will be carrying six imaging and atmospheric sounding instruments to acquire data in the visible, infrared and microwave portions of the spectrum, crucial for weather forecasting, climate monitoring and a broad range of other services and applications.
One of these six instruments is IASI-NG (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Instrument-New Generation), to
which the French scientific community and national weather service Meteo France have made a big
contribution and for which CNES has overall technical responsibility including in-orbit commissioning. The
agency also developed the chain for processing raw data from the instrument into atmospheric
characterization data. It is also in charge of developing and operating a technical expertise centre to monitor the instrument’s performance once in orbit.
IASI-NG is a passive infrared remote-sensing instrument designed to determine temperature and water
vapour profiles in the atmosphere, record ocean surface and land temperatures and monitor a vast range
of chemical compounds as well as 16 essential climate variables that can only be observed from space,
including greenhouse gases, desert dust and cloud cover. Extending the data record built up by its
predecessor IASI, IASI-NG will be a real asset for atmosphere sciences, particularly numerical weather
prediction models, atmospheric composition studies and climate research. Thanks to its innovative optical
configuration, the new-generation instrument’s data will be twice as accurate as IASI’s and it is a key
element of Europe’s three future MetOp-SG-A series weather satellites.
Also among the six instruments is Sentinel-5 from the European Commission’s Copernicus programme.
This sensor dedicated to atmospheric monitoring will deliver daily global data on key air pollutants, essential climate variables and stratospheric ozone.
After its inaugural flight on 9 July 2024, the new modular and versatile Ariane 6 heavy-lift launcher has
succeeded Ariane 5 and restored Europe’s independent access to space, taking European space transportation into a new era.

Source: CNES