MSG-4, the fourth and last Meteosat Second Generation satellite, will be launched on July 15th from French Guiana. Like all Meteosat satellites, MSG-4 was built by Thales Alenia Space for the European Space Agency (ESA) and Eumetsat. This fourth satellite in the series will be placed into a geostationary orbit at 3.4° West above the equator. The second-generation MSG satellites provide meteorologists with higher image quality thanks to a significant increase in the number of observation channels, better radiometric performance and shorter revisit cycles. The next generation, Meteosat Third Generation (MTG), will reduce the image refresh rate to every 10 minutes, making weather forecasts increasingly accurate.

Three Thales Alenia Space-built satellites dedicated to climate change monitoring and environmental management will be launched this year. The first, MSG-4, will be followed by Jason-3 and Sentinel-3A later in the year.

The photos were taken in December 2014 in Thales Alenia Space's clean rooms, in Cannes - Copyright: Cédric Samson