[SatNews] EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, held its 71st Council meeting in Darmstadt, Germany, on 30 November and 1 December.

Turning to the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) program, Council achieved a confirmed funding level of around 86 per cent, with 22 of the 26 Member States having firmly committed to the program. The remaining four Member States are expected to follow suit soon, pending the completion of national approval procedures. The funding level is high enough for the MTG program preliminary activities to proceed in January 2011, pending the approval of Portugal. Council also gave the green light for preparations for the upcoming launches of the Metop-B polar-orbiting satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome during the second quarter of 2012 and the third Meteosat Second Generation (MSG-3) geostationary satellite from the Kourou Space Centre during the third quarter of 2012. It will be the first time EUMETSAT has prepared two launches for the same year.

Regarding Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), Council approved the preparation of a Program Proposal for a third-party program for the establishment of GMES user requirements on behalf of the European Commission. Council also approved implementation of several proposals to expand data access for EUMETSAT’s user community. As part of EUMETSAT’s increasing cooperation on data exchange with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Council approved a near-real-time dissemination system for data from the scatterometer on board ISRO’s Oceansat-2 satellite.

Council also gave the go-ahead for implementation of a pilot EUMETSAT Advanced Retransmission Service (EARS) Nowcasting service, comprising Cloud Mask, Cloud Type and Cloud Top Temperature and height products. Furthermore, Council agreed to plans for a set of baseline services for providing fast access to European users to data from the future US NPP/JPSS-1 satellites. In order to do so, the EUMETSAT Director-General received the go-ahead from Council to establish cooperative arrangements for the provision of NPP/JPSS-1 data with direct readout station operators. Council also approved a data exchange agreement with the Korea Meteorological Administration and authorised the EUMETSAT Director-General to sign it.