The Meteosat Programme

This eBook gives an overview of an era in the history of the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) and its successor the European Space Agency (ESA), the Meteosat era, which came to an end on 30 November 1995 with the handover of the programme to EUMETSAT. It covers the different phases of the programme (preparatory phase 1969-1972, implementation phase 1973-1977), pre-operational phase 1978-1983 and the operational phase 1984-1995). Furthermore, it addresses image processing, extraction of the meteorological products and the archiving of the data. In addition, weather phenomena observed during the operational phase are presented, meteorological topics explained and non-meteorological applications listed.