Metop: The space segment for Eumetsat's Polar System

Metop-1: will be Europe's first polar-orbiting satellite dedicated to opera tional meteorology. As such, it marks the start of our contribution to bala nce a long-standing service provided by the United States from its Tires, n ow FOES (Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite), Programme. The first Tires satellite was launched 40 years ago and in the intervening period the US has provided the data from this evolving series of satellites free of charge to the worldwide meteorological community. As early as 1967 , Europe looked towards balancing this effort, but initially selected a geo stationary satellite mission as the higher priority. This led to the develo pment of the Meteosat series of satellites, the first of which was launched in 1977.