Again, in Europe, this is called Metop, and this four-tonne platform circles the globe, pole to pole, every 100 minutes.
Consider for a moment all the lives that have been saved and all the damage to property that has been prevented by Metop-supported weather forecasts.
I've written recently about the mess the Americans seem to have got themselves into with their counterparts to Metop - the Noaa series of satellites.
It will also incorporate the observations of another current Metop instrument, Amsu (Advanced Microwave Sounding Units A1 and A2), which makes temperature profiles of the atmosphere.
Fortunately, it has two spare Metop-class spacecraft already built, and can stagger their launch to ensure there is continuity of data through to at least 2020.
If you weight the importance of the various data components that now underpin the 24-hour forecast, then Metop is probably responsible for some 25% of the impact.
That is the discussion taking place right now, although the cost of a new and improved Metop system means the future satellites and their instruments will again be a batch-buy.
By common consent, Metop has been a revelation since its launch in 2006, and we exchange its data with the Americans who run a similar operation, giving us double the value.
Studies have compared all the different types of observations (including surface weather stations, balloons and aeroplanes, etc) ingested in weather models and found that Metop data makes the largest contribution to the accuracy of 24-hour lookahead, at around 25%.
Britain played a significant role in the development of Metop, building the service structure and propulsion modules for all three spacecraft, as well as providing MHS (Microwave Humidity Sounder) - an instrument that retrieves important information about humidity in the atmosphere - for Metop and its American counterparts.
Metop's suite of instruments retrieve a range of data - from the temperature and water content of the different layers in the atmosphere to the speed of the winds whipping across the ocean, and from the health of the ozone layer to the spread of volcanic ash plumes across the sky.
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