Second imaging satellite of Meteosat Third Generation returns its first pictures of Earth

6 November 2026

The European Space Agency has released the first images from MTG-I2, the second imager of the Meteosat Third Generation family of weather satellites. The Meteosat Third Generation programme is built by the European Space Agency and operated by EUMETSAT, the European organisation that runs Europe's weather satellites from geostationary and polar orbits. The family pairs imaging satellites, which photograph cloud and land in many wavelengths, with sounding satellites that profile temperature and humidity through the depth of the atmosphere. First images are the point at which a new satellite's instruments are shown to be working as designed, before the data is released for operational forecasting. The series is intended to carry European geostationary weather observation through the coming decades, replacing the earlier Meteosat generations that have watched Europe, Africa and the Atlantic since the 1970s.