Technical Paper
Thermal Testing of the MetOp Service Module
2004-07-19
2004-01-2306
MetOp is a series of three meteorology and climate monitoring satellites, which will be launched using the Russian Soyuz-Fregat vehicle over a period of 14 years starting in 2005. MetOp will form part of the American ‘Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites’ (POES) programme, a further step in European/American collaboration in space. The MetOp satellites will fly in a sun-synchronous polar orbit at an altitude of between 800 and 850km, with a repeat cycle of 29 days. The satellite is based on the successful Spot platform, which has carried a number of European earth observation satellites over the last 15 years, and consists of two parts: 1. The Payload Module (or PLM) which carries twelve instruments, provided by the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the French space agency, CNES. 2.
