The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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Working on the AMSU-A2 instrument. A very important feature of MetOp with its many instruments is the ability to combine the results of one instrument with others. To this end we have to know precisely - and this means to fractions of a degree - the instrument's field of view relative to each other. To achieve this, first the instruments have to be aligned by a precise optical measurement, and then the mechanical fine-tuning is performed by carefully positioning thin aluminium foils on the instrument mounting-plane.
MetOp-A was launched on 19 October 2006 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, on a Soyuz ST rocket with a Fregat upper stage.