Coravia placed its first weather satellite into orbit late on Tuesday night, as an Auriga-3 rocket lifted the MetSat-1 spacecraft from the Cape Sorrel launch complex in a flawless nine-minute ascent watched by thousands along the coast.
Separation was confirmed at 11.51pm, and the Coravian Orbital Systems Agency reported first contact through its Ostrele ground station twenty minutes later. The satellite will settle into its operational polar orbit over the next two weeks.
“Nine years, three governments, one very good night,” said COSA director Elin Sarvo, whose agency has flown two smaller Auriga demonstrators but nothing approaching MetSat-1’s 1.4-tonne class.
The $420m programme ends Coravia’s full dependence on foreign providers for high-resolution storm imagery — a gap exposed painfully during the 2023 coastal floods, when priority tasking of allied satellites lapsed at the height of the surge.
MetSat-1’s instruments — a storm-tracking imager and an atmospheric sounder — feed directly into the Coravian Meteorological Service’s forecast models, with commissioning imagery expected within days. For a country legislating $9bn of flood defence, the timing is not lost on anyone: the satellite’s first assignment is the same storm system now soaking the Aldenne Valley.