An Ariane 5 ECA+ rocket was launched from Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana on 13 December at 2030 GMT. It carried Eumetsat’s MTG-I1 (Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1), along with two communications satellites for Intelsat: Galaxy 35 and Galaxy 36.
The 3,600 kg Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) Imager 1 – MTG-I1 satellite for EUMETSAT and the European Space Agency (ESA) will help meteorologists meet one of their main challenges – the rapid detection and forecasting of severe weather events such as storms, flooding, wild fires and fog. MTG-I1 will produce images of Europe and Africa every 10 minutes from the Flexible Combined Imager’s 16 spectral channels. The Lightning Imager will continuously map lightning flashes between clouds and from clouds to the ground. Higher resolution imagery will be available more quickly, in a significant advance for forecasting of rapidly developing severe weather events.
Galaxy 35 and Galaxy 36 are a pair of circa 3,300 kg communications satellites to provide direct TV to North America for use in the geostationary orbital arc. The satellite pair were build by the US/Canadian firm Maxar’s SSL division and use the 1300 bus design. Galaxy 35 and Galaxy 36 will replace Intelsats aging satellites – Galaxy 3C now over 20 years old and Galaxy 28 now over 17 years old.
Ariane 5 ECA+ launches MTG-I1 and Galaxy 35/36. Courtesy: Arianespace
Galaxy 35 was successfully deployed to GTO around 27 minutes after launch with Galaxy 36 being deployed four minutes later. Eumetsat’s first third generation weather satellite MTG-I1 was deployed around 35 minutes after launch.
David Todd contributed to this report
