Four days after its launch on 17 January, the Jason-3 high-precision ocean altimetry satellite is delivering its first sea surface height measurement data in near-real time for evaluation by engineers from the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), EUMETSAT, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and scientists from the international Ocean Surface Topography Science Team.

The Jason-3 high-precision ocean altimetry satellite was successfully launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 19:42 CET (10:42 California time) on a Falcon 9 launcher procured by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the acquisition agent for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

EUMETSAT has successfully completed the commissioning of its MSG-4 satellite, and renamed it Meteosat-11.

Yesterday, EUMETSAT’s Director-General, Alain Ratier, and Jean-Yves Le Gall, President of CNES, signed a cooperation agreement for the development of a new generation of Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometers (IASI-NG) to be flown on three successive Metop-SG A satellites of the EUMETSAT Polar System of Second Generation (EPS-SG) in the 2021-2040 timeframe.

In the presence of Dr Stephen Volz, Assistant Administrator for NOAA Satellite and Information services, the EUMETSAT Council took important decisions for the implementation of the EPS-Second Generation (EPS-SG) and Jason-Continuity of Service (Jason-CS) programmes, both approved this summer and implemented in cooperation with the United States.

EUMETSAT and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States today signed an agreement on their Joint Polar System (JPS), which will provide observations from two complementary polar orbits in the period from 2020 to 2040.