Europe’s next-gen weather satellite sends back first images

New satellite should provide data on temperature and humidity, for more accurate weather forecasting over Europe and northern Africa Keystone-SDA

The first images from the new Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder satellite have been presented. It should provide data on temperature and humidity, for more accurate weather forecasting over Europe and northern Africa. Switzerland will also benefit.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The European Space Agency (ESA) presented the images at the European Space Conference in Brussels on Tuesday. They come from the Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder (MTG-S) satellite, which was launched into space in July 2025.

The images, which were taken at an altitude of around 36,000 kilometres above the earth, show the temperatures on the earth’s surface and on the top of clouds, the humidity. Other images show the humidity in the atmosphere.

“We expect that the data from this mission will change the way we predict severe storms over Europe,” said ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes Simonetta Cheli in a statement.

The satellite provides new data on temperature and humidity for Europe and parts of North Africa every 30 minutes. This should help meteorologists forecast the development of severe storms more accurately.

Switzerland also benefits

Switzerland will also benefit from the data, the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) announced after the satellite was launched in July.

Although the data from the new satellite will not be processed directly by MeteoSwiss in the initial phase, it will be incorporated into the models of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.

“This is expected to further improve the forecast quality, from which all European weather services – including Switzerland – will benefit indirectly,” says MeteoSwiss.

It is also likely that the data will be incorporated into MeteoSwiss’s short-term forecasting systems in the future.

Adapted from German by AI/sb

How we work 

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]