Meteosat-8 drifts to new orbit

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Meteosat-8, one of EUMETSAT’s geostationary meteorological satellites, has just completed an 80-day journey from 3.5 degrees East to 41.5 degrees East, to be part of an international cooperative arrangement to provide observations of the weather and climate over the Indian Ocean. You can watch the “satellite’s eye” view of this journey in our video, which comprises one image per day (at noon local time) taken on Meteosat-8’s voyage.

Meteosat-8, the first of EUMETSAT’s Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellites, will replace the soon-to-be-deorbited Meteosat-7, the last of the first generation satellites, which was providing observations for the Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC) service, but is approaching the end of its 20-year-long lifetime in space.

Meteosat-8 will provide the IODC service along with geostationary satellites from India, China and Russia. The transition to Meteosat-8 marks an important change and significant improvement to the service, because this satellite offers a wider suite of products, more observation channels, an enhanced image spatial resolution and more frequent imaging than Meteosat-7. The imagery provides crucial information for “nowcasting” severe weather events.

This will benefit not only countries, such as Indian Ocean islands and the coast of East Africa, which are subject to tropical cyclones, but will also allow for better observations of EUMETSAT’s Member States in Central Europe.