Eumetsat & ESA Dive Into A Joint “Understanding”

During the morning of the 63 EUMETSAT Council, Dr. Lars Prahm, Director General of EUMETSAT, and Volker Liebig, Director of Earth Observation Programs at the European Space Agency (ESA), exchanged letters to document the understanding achieved between EUMETSAT and ESA. The letters dealt with the cooperation and coordination regarding the approval process of the respective MTG programs in both organisations. The understanding notes the preparation status of the MTG program, which is currently in Phase A and sets out to define the agreed next steps. The understanding also defines exact cooperation measures required from both organisations for Phase A and the ensuing Phase B. Plus, the principles for cooperation in the future phases for which an agreement regulating the respective roles, responsibilities and financial commitments of the two organisations, are going to have to be developed next year. This Agreement will subsequently be presented to the EUMETSAT and ESA Councils for approval in the second half of 2008.




The letter also lists the principles that would provide the overall context of the respective roles EUMETSAT and ESA roles will take in the planning and execution of the programs. These principles identify ESA as the development agency for both the basic space segment technologies and the first twin satellites of MTG, for the following satellites, ESA would be the procurement agency on behalf of EUMETSAT. EUMETSAT, in turn, would specify and consolidate End User Requirements, as well as requirements for the overall mission, space to ground and the ground segment itself. EUMETSAT will also be responsible for the overall mission and system engineering. The ground segment design will develop the ground segment and fund the procurement of the recurrent satellites, the launch services and LEOP phases and would execute the commissioning of the MTG system and run its operations.