MTG-I2 reaches its final orbit

Europe’s Meteosat Third Generation Imager 2 (MTG-I2) satellite has reached its designated orbit at 36,000 km from Earth and is ready to begin commissioning, preparing it to provide years of service improving weather forecasting over Europe and North Africa. The milestone came just 12 days after launch from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on an Ariane 6 rocket, when the satellite completed the launch and early orbit phase (LEOP). It joins two sister satellites in orbit, marking a major milestone for Europe’s next-generation weather satellites and completing the first family of MTG satellites.

Since separating from its Ariane 6 launcher, MTG-I2 was carefully guided into its final geostationary orbit. It joins the first imager, MTG-I1, launched in 2022, and the first sounder, MTG-S1, launched in 2025. Their combined observations are expected to significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of weather and environmental data available to European users, supporting improved weather forecasting, severe-weather nowcasting, numerical weather prediction and climate monitoring across Europe and North Africa.

ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes Simonetta Cheli called it a key milestone for a mission of great importance to Europe that will make a real difference to how it prepares for and responds to extreme weather events. She said she looked forward to the completed family of MTG satellites providing operational data that improves resilience for communities, and thanked the teams that worked on each phase. The first MTG constellation was developed through close collaboration between ESA and Eumetsat, with an international industrial consortium led by Thales Alenia Space in cooperation with OHB and Leonardo; the full constellation will be operated by Eumetsat throughout its lifetime.

After liftoff, communication was established through the Malindi ground station in Kenya, the satellite’s propulsion system was started, and its solar arrays were deployed so it could generate its own power. ESA’s MTG Satellites Commissioning and Operations Manager Alex Palacios said seeing the solar arrays deploy was a great moment when the team knew the mission was safe, though it was only the beginning of a tremendous amount of work. He noted that, as expected for such a complex spacecraft, there were small deviations from predictions, but specialists supporting LEOP explained them quickly and confirmed the satellite was behaving as expected. From the point of separation, MTG-I2 still had to increase its distance from Earth as part of its journey to geostationary orbit.