Nicholas Coyne, additional data services manager of the real-time services and system operations division at EUMETSAT, speaks to Meteorological Technology International to reveal more about the organization’s international data partnership agreements with the world’s largest meteorological offices and increasingly influential industry partners.
Please tell us about your role.
As an additional data services manager at EUMETSAT, I lead a team responsible for managing data that doesn’t originate directly from our own satellites. Instead, it comes from partner organizations and other spacecraft. We have partnership agreements with organizations like NOAA, the Chinese Meteorological Service and the Japanese Meteorological Agency. Through these partnerships, we share data with each other, allowing us to distribute data from Japan or China to our users in Europe.
What are some of the top challenges you face, and how do you address them?
Our main challenges involve approaching these important offices and identifying which data products are useful for our users, and ensuring we can deliver those products with the timeliness and formats that they need. Something that is very challenging in the meteorological world is that everyone wants different formats. Whether you’re speaking to someone in rain or hydrology, they will always have a different preferred format. So it’s always very tricky to ensure that we match the correct data to the correct user.
Are there any specific technologies you’ve implemented recently to help with this?
We recently launched the latest in our series of meteorological satellites, the Meteosat Third Generation, which is now coming online. Over the next two years, we have another four satellite launches scheduled. This does present certain technical challenges for my team and will make it a very busy and challenging time for us to try to put all the required infrastructure in place.
How do you plan to manage such a complex operation?
I think we’re ready for it. We’ve launched many new satellites, so I’d say my team has become quite proficient at it. However, it’s not only us that’s involved. There are many moving parts. For example, the rocket itself doesn’t belong to us and the launch and the early orbit phase, known as LEOP (launch and early orbit phase), is controlled by someone else. When the satellites are in the correct orbit, they hand them over to us and we can get them ready to produce the data that we send to our users.
Is there anything particularly special about this new satellite?
Yes, the data requirements for our satellites are driven by user needs and wants. With the third generation of the Meteosat and the upcoming Metop second generation of low Earth satellites, which we intend to launch at the end of 2025. They’re a big highlight for us as those satellites are the next generation and therefore offer about a fourfold improvement in data quality.
Are there any specific initiatives with these launches that you’ve implemented to increase sustainability?
Over the years, EUMETSAT has changed a little bit. Its focus originally was meteorology but now we’ve moved into looking at space weather as well, for example, to address broader environmental needs. We’re also hoping to have a polar mission. Indeed, ESA currently has an Arctic weather satellite (AWS), which is a precursor to the missions that EUMETSAT wants to have in the future. So, there are big changes coming, but there are no definite plans so far.
How does all this impact your future plans?
Our plans are largely driven by the needs of EUMETSAT’s member states, which include 30 European countries. The directions we make are ratified by those member states, so EUMETSAT is steered by what the users want. So, while our remit has expanded to include areas like climate and space weather, we remain focused on what our users ask for.
At a departmental level, my team has recently become responsible for commercial data, so EUMETSAT can fill gaps in our own data with commercially purchased data. So we’ve been looking at that, how to do it and what’s involved. Our first commercial project involves buying radio occultation data from a company called Spire. We ran a pilot program, and in mid-August 2024 we began an operational flow of this commercially procured data.
This field is incredibly interesting because it’s so dynamic. My team often handles projects that don’t quite fit into other departments. I sometimes feel that everyone else has got the run-of-the-mill tasks compared with the things we get to do, which are quite buoyant. The work changes rapidly, which keeps things engaging.
Do you have any advice for someone new to this field?
That’s a great question. One of the things that frustrated me when I was starting out was having a vision and then having someone say, “No, don’t be ridiculous, that can’t possibly happen”, so you give up on it. Yet, over the years, I’ve seen that some of the things that I have suggested have come to fruition anyway. So I would tell my younger self, “Don’t be browbeaten into thinking that things aren’t possible, because they are possible. Never let go of a vision just because others say it’s impossible”. I’d even say it’s worth making a list of what you think your industry will look like in 20 years for a time capsule, so you can open it up and see how you did.
With that in mind, are there any specific industry trends you’re keeping an eye on for the future?
I think the commercial aspect of the satellite industry and their evolving relationship with intergovernmental agencies is going to make something quite interesting – precisely because there is a cost. Whether we pay the industry to give us that data or whether we build a satellite to launch and operate ourselves, there is always a cost.
I think you see that conundrum in many industries where things are contracted out. Many people think things shouldn’t go that way, and many people think they should. I’m interested to see where that goes.
Take the automotive industry, for example. They contract little bits out and then assemble all the pieces together themselves. In that situation, is the car manufacturer manufacturing a car if they haven’t manufactured all parts of that car? If so, why isn’t the space industry moving that way as well? I think what Elon Musk has done with SpaceX has demonstrated that NASA is not the only major player when it comes to putting rockets into space and launching satellites – whereas before, that was always a governmental agency.
In related news, EUMETSAT recently began disseminating data from the lightning imager carried on the Meteosat Third Generation – Imager 1 (MTG-I1) satellite, which was launched at the end of 2022. The lightning imager was built by Leonardo. Click here to read the full story.
