Mtg-I1 leaves tomorrow, Tuesday 13 December, from the Kourou base in French Guiana. Thanks to the lightning hunter make a leap forward in early predictions of extreme events of the next 20 years. And inside there is a lot of Italy
Everything is ready at the base in Kourou, in French Guiana, for the launch at 21.30 (Italian time) on Tuesday 13 December of Mtg-I1, the first third-generation Meteosat satellite which will make meteorological forecasts leap forward for the next twenty years. We hope it will be possible to have short-term forecasts, i.e. 3-5 hours before the extreme weather event, said Silvia Puca, of the Civil Protection Department. The satellite, which will be placed in a geostationary orbit above the equator at an altitude of about 36,000 km by the Ariane 5 rocket, equipped with new survey tools for early, very short-term search for signs of developing hurricanes and severe stormsfor climate monitoring and weather forecasting (a fundamental element that could change the lives of many people, increasingly subject to extreme events). On board, one of the main instruments, the lightning hunter, built at Leonardo di Campi Bisenzio, in the province of Florence, the first built in Europe.
The strong Italian participation
Mtg-I1 is the first of six satellites developed by the collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Eumetsat (European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites). The satellite was built by Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), in collaboration with Ohb. Telespazio has created and manages the telemetry, tracking and command system for the Mtg satellites, one at the Fucino Space Center (in Abruzzo) and the other at Cheia (Romania). Telespazio will manage operations from Fucino for putting Mtg-I1 into orbit and transferring it to the final orbit.
The Lightning Hunter
The Lightning Hunter
i capable of capturing even a single bolt of lightning in the sky, in any light condition, both day and night. It will take a few months for it to be fully operational, he explained Paolo Ruti, chief scientist of Eumetsat, but we think that by the end of the summer the data will be ready for operational use. A very important tool: In the twenty minutes preceding a storm or tornado – explains Carlo Simoncelli, Leonardo’s Lightning Imager Program Manager – there is a significant increase in intra cloud lightning phenomena. Clearly these are not simple observations, given the lightning speed, wavelength and size.
In real time
The new satellites are able to analyze the data faster than the second generation ones (we speak today of nowcasting or short term forecasting) reducing the passage time over Europe to just 2 and a half minutes against the current 10 and with a resolution up to 0.5 kilometers. The benefit of satellite data for forecasts from agriculture to travel is estimated at 61 billion euros a year, said Simonetta Cheli, director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programmes.
December 12, 2022 (change December 12, 2022 | 11:36 am)
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