An Ariane 62 lifts off Aug. 27 carrying the MTG-I2 weather satellite. Credit: ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE-ArianeGroup\Optique Video de CSG–S. Martin.
WASHINGTON — An Ariane 6 successfully launched a European weather satellite Aug. 27 on the rocket’s first mission to geostationary orbit.
The Ariane 62 lifted off from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, at 4:11 p.m. Eastern. The rocket’s upper stage deployed its payload, the MTG-I2 weather satellite, into a geostationary transfer orbit 36 minutes later.
MTG-I2, built by Thales Alenia Space, is the third satellite in the Meteosat Third Generation program of weather satellites developed by the European Space Agency and Eumetsat. It joins MTG-I1, launched in 2022 on an Ariane 5, and MTG-S1, launched in 2025 on a Falcon 9.
This latest satellite, like MTG-I1, carries a high-resolution imager to support weather forecasting. However, while MTG-I1 takes a full-disk image of the Earth every 10 minutes, MTG-I2 will take images of Europe and North Africa every 2.5 minutes. MTG-S1 carries atmospheric sounding instruments.
