Meteosat-10/Meteosat-11 mission swap

Meteosat-10 and Meteosat-11 will swap roles and orbital positions in March 2023.

Last Updated

15 March 2023

Published on

28 February 2023

Meteosat-10, launched on 5 July 2012, has been providing the Rapid Scanning Service (RSS) since February 2018.

The Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) SEVIRI scan mechanism was designed to execute Full Earth Scan (FES) operations throughout the spacecraft lifetime. At EUMETSAT´s request, ad hoc tests were performed by the instrument manufacturer, to confirm the scan mechanism could also safely perform rapid scanning for a number of cycles, equivalent to about five consecutive years.

Meteosat-10 SEVIRI scan mechanism is now expected to reach the maximum RSS qualification limit around Quarter 2/Quarter 3 of 2023, ending its capacity to perform RSS cycles.

Therefore, for a safe continuation of FES and RSS services, it is required that we swap the FES/RSS roles and orbital positions of Meteosat-10 and Meteosat-11, as follows:

Meteosat-10 currently performs RSS from a position at 9.5°E. It will be relocated to 0° and take over the FES mission.
Meteosat-11 currently performs FES from a position at 0°. It will be relocated to 9.5°E and take over the RSS mission.

The mission swap operations are planned to start on 1 March 2023, and will require a total of 42 days during which the relocation of both satellites will be executed while preserving their planned lifetime.

During the swap operations, FES and RSS services are planned to be provided as follows:

Timeline	FES Service	RSS Service
1 March 19:00 UTC to 13 March 15:00 UTC	Meteosat-11	Meteosat-10 (while drifting)
13 March 15:00 UTC to 21 March 08:00 UTC ( start of mission swap)	Meteosat-11	Interrupted
21 March from 8:00 UTC to 14:00 UTC	Interrupted*	Interrupted
21 March 14:00 UTC (end of mission swap) to 28 March 08:00 UTC	Meteosat-10	Interrupted
28 March 08:00 UTC to 12 April 06:00 UTC	Meteosat-10	Meteosat-11 (while drifting)
After 12 April 06:00 UTC	Meteosat-10	Meteosat-11

*Note: On 21 March, the FES image generation is expected to be interrupted between 2 and 6 hours. Meteorological Products might take up to two weeks to reach a nominal quality.

The RSS service is planned to be interrupted for 15 days (between 13 and 28 March).

An interruption to the 0° DCP service, on 21 March, is also to be expected, and will last ca. 2 hours, from 07:15 UTC to 09:30 UTC.

Filenames

After Meteosat-10 has taken over the FES service from 21/03/2023, filenames will be as follows:

For 0° SEVIRI image data:
H-000-MSG3__-MSG3________-<channel>______-<segment>___-yyyyMMddhhmmss-C_
For 0° SEVIRI meteorological products:
W_XX-EUMETSAT-Darmstadt,SING+LEV+SAT,MET10+<product>_C_EUMG_ yyyyMMddhhmmss _3.bin

After Meteosat-11 has taken over the RSS service from 28/03/2023, filenames will be as follows:

For RSS SEVIRI image data:
H-000-MSG4__-MSG4_RSS____-<channel>______-<segment>___-yyyyMMddhhmmss-C_
For RSS SEVIRI meteorological products:
W_XX-EUMETSAT-Darmstadt,SING+LEV+SAT,MET11+<product>_C_EUMG_ yyyyMMddhhmmss _4.bin

The EUMETCast channels currently in use will remain unchanged.

GTS Bulletin Headers

For the Meteosat meteorological products distributed on the GTS, the bulletin headers will remain unchanged after the mission swap (Note: the first two characters of the GTS bulletin headers represent the Meteosat service, and not the spacecraft.)

Bulletin headers for the prime Meteosat mission at 0°