Europe's first geostationary sounder satellite is launched

https://www.eumetsat.int/europes-first-geostationary-sounder-satellite-launched

121•diggan•5h ago

Comments

ArneVogel•5h ago

I think this is the first time I have seen the .int tld used.

diggan•5h ago

It isn't super popular, no. I think the requirements are pretty strict if I remember correctly (edit: https://www.iana.org/domains/int/policy).

I think esa.int is probably one of the more popular .int domains on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=esa.int

r721•5h ago

interpol.int also comes to mind.

readthenotes1•4h ago

It would have been better if the requirements also included the domain name had to start with a letter between I and N (inclusive).

But I guess this is what you get when these things get away from technologists.

jfengel•4h ago

Ah, a Fortran joke. That's not just "technologists". That's old farts.

(In Fortran 66, variables didn't have to be declared. They would be integer if they began with I, J, K, L, M, or N. Otherwise it would be floating point [REAL, in Fortran parlance]. To this day it's why for loops usually use "i". With the bonus joke that God is real unless declared integer.)

lutoma•2h ago

Other notable .int domains:

• World Health Organization - https://who.int

• NATO - https://nato.int

• Council of Europe - https://coe.int

• Mercosur - https://mercosur.int

• African Union - https://au.int

• EFTA - https://efta.int

dylan604•2h ago

How long until an executive order is issued to block the .int TLD. Everything on that list goes against current US policies.

complex_pi•1h ago

In meteorology, you also have ecmwf.int (the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts).

perihelions•5h ago

> "MTG-S1’s Infrared Sounder will scan nearly 2,000 thermal infrared wavelengths every 30 minutes to build vertical profiles of temperature, humidity, and trace gases. These data will be crucial for detecting fast-developing convective weather by revealing sudden shifts in instability, moisture, or wind – even before clouds begin to form."

In other words, it is

> "The Infrared Sounder on MTG-S1 is the first hyperspectral sounding instrument in geostationary orbit."

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Meteoro...

Is there a more technical article describing this hyperspectral instrument somewhere? It sounds pretty novel.

edit: Also, I'm now confused about the ESA's claim to be "the first", because

> "In 2016, the Chinese Meteorological Agency (CMA) launched the Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder (GIIRS), to be the first hyperspectral sounder in geostationary orbit"

https://www.aos.wisc.edu/aosjournal/Volume38/Loveless_PhD.pd... (PhD thesis of David M. Loveless (2021))

diggan•5h ago

> edit: Also, I'm now confused about the ESA's claim to be the "first", because

I think you might have misread the title, "Europe’s first [...]"

> Is there a more technical article describing this hyperspectral instrument somewhere?

https://space.oscar.wmo.int/instruments/view/irs has an short overview

Then this document provides an introduction (+ details) about the MTG-IRS program in general: https://user.eumetsat.int/s3/eup-strapi-media/MTG_IRS_L2_ATB...

perihelions•5h ago

> "I think you might have misread the title,"

No; I'm quoting the esa.int article verbatim. The eumetsat.int article qualifies "...over Europe", but the esa.int does not. I suspect esa.int is just mistaken.

dylan604•2h ago

Clearly, if it’s not European, it doesn’t count.

riedel•5h ago

Here is a link that lists the sensors/data products roughly: https://webapps.itc.utwente.nl/sensor/getsat.aspx?Find=sat&N...

The IRS seems 4km and sentinel 4 8km if I read it correctly. The cool thing is that it is stationary unlike other sentinel satellites and can actually be used for now casting. No clue how infrared sounding performs with cloud cover.

cyanydeez•4h ago

Imagine a world where America actually wanted to understand climate change.

AlecSchueler•3h ago

Considering the emissions of the US and the outright rejection of climate action through the Paris accords, and the covering up of climate related research, it would seem fair to consider climate change as partly caused by outright American hostility. They say the most impacted will be people in developing nations, also, not in the US. Absolutely horrific actions.

themisto•5h ago

Only tangentially related: I have nothing but respect for EUMETSAT and their public data store. For past work projects I've had to interface with a pretty broad sample of the world's space and/or meteorological agency's public data stores and APIs and EUMDAC (EUMETSAT's API client) was top tier. Well documented, modern, fast, and generally headache free.

In fact, I have nothing but respect for any agency that makes free and public access to earth observation data a priority, regardless of how janky their API is.

st3fan•4h ago

Canada should be next.

aziaziazi•1h ago

Naive question: what’s the benefit here to scan downward (from the satellite position) over upward, from the ground?

complex_pi•1h ago

If the question is about satellite vs ground instrument: the geographic coverage from the satellite is much greater. Geostationary instruments over Europe cover the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, Africa, the Middle East.

If that was not the question, can you provide more detail?

mensetmanusman•3m ago

You can’t drive your sensor bank everywhere on the surface of the earth to point up.

abra0•1h ago

> MTG-S1 is the first geostationary meteorological sounder satellite to fly over Europe

I was confused for a minute on how it's both _geostationary_ and _over Europe_ -- you can't be geostationary if your orbit is not over the equator!

Turns out[1] the MTG-S1 satellite is in fact geostationary and parked at exactly 0°00'00"N 0°00'00"E (off the coast of Ghana), 42164 km up from the center of Earth, it's just pointing at Europe at an angle.

1 - https://space.oscar.wmo.int/satellites/view/mtg_s1

complex_pi•49m ago

NOAA/NASA (USA), EUMETSAT (European organization), JMA (Japan), KMA (Korea), and CMA (China) all have a geostationary satellite (one or more actually). So, northern hemisphere countries, but the coverage is global thanks to the fact that you need to be, as you say, above the equator.

progbits•6m ago

I had doubts about the "parked at exactly 0°00'00"N 0°00'00"E", thinking it was over Null Island just because the data wasn't updated yet and it was showing uninitialized values.

But you are right, [1] confirms "0° longitude".

[1] https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/mtg-in-opera...

Tell HN: A fake, highly obfuscated Solidity VSCode plugin found on marketplace

Cheese may give you nightmares

XGH: EXtreme Go Horse Methodology (2019)

Context Engineering as Code – Systematic approach to reliable AI development

India bars Jane Street from securities market, citing stock index manipulation

Dylanaraps changes README after >1 year

Ask HN: How do accelerators/VC track internal operations across startups?

Context Engineering Guide

The Two Towers MUD

Network Reconnaissance as a Way of Seeing the Invisible

Pet ownership and cognitive functioning in later adulthood across pet types

Killer AI [video]

Let's Talk Safari Extensions on iOS

Agencymaxxing

Core RISC-V supercluster on a single M.2 [video]

Gödel's Beavers, or the Limits of Knowledge

Congress passes budget reconciliation bill with $10B for NASA – SpaceNews

Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Will Make China Great Again

My Blog Is Overengineered to the Point People Think It's a Static Site (2022)

Ask HN: Is there a market for agentic scraping tools?

Hanako-San

Ask HN: What are fundamental books on systems, system thinking, reliability?

Stop Killing Games in EU passed 1.000.000 signatures

Jan – Local AI Assistant

Fixing the Web? – Carson Gross [video]

Cod Have Been Shrinking for Decades, Scientists Say They've Solved Mystery

Show HN: I built an multi-devices AI usage analytics app for Claude Code

How to create repositories in Artifactory with curl

Writing Modular Prompts

Show HN: Centenary Day – toolkit for healthy living (routines, meals, tracking)