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2. Historical background

During the eighties, ESA had been planning to build an Earth Observation multi-disciplinary Polar Platform for flying by the end of the century. At some stage, it was decided that the instruments of meteorological operational nature would be better put together in a separate satellite, based on the polar platform design. Such satellite/s, called MetOp, would be the European contribution to the World’s Meteorological Organization (WMO) satellite system, as replacement of the morning meteorological polar satellites provided now by the USA (NOAA/TIROS series). In order to provide continuity and complementarity, the NOAA payload would also be flown in such satellite.

The remaining instruments, geared mainly to non-meteorological applications, were then put together in the multi-mission Envisat satellite, to be launched in the mid of year 2001.

The European Organization for the exploitation of Meteorological operational Satellites, EUMETSAT, co-operates with ESA in the MetOp venture. This was also the case for Meteosat since 1986, and for Meteosat Second Generation MSG to be launched in 2002. EUMETSAT has the overall responsibility of the European Polar System EPS. This includes the three MetOp satellite’s launches, operations of the ground segment during 14 years, development of some instruments, and procurement of the two recurrent satellites, while contributing to the development of the prototype (MetOp-1), which is under ESA’s technical responsibility.

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