The instrument whisperer

Meet Gary Fowler, one of many behind the Meteosat Third Generation mission

As we gear up for this year’s launch of the second of the Meteosat Third Generation satellites, we’re shining a spotlight on some of the experts who are making this mission happen.

Last Updated

17 February 2025

Published on

17 February 2025

Gary Fowler traces his initial fascination with space back to Star Trek.

As a child, he was particularly enthralled by the hyperlogical crew member Spock for his ability to solve difficult problems using careful analysis. Fowler’s second favourite character was the adventure hero James Tiberius Kirk, who served as the ship’s captain. Unfortunately, this admiration, paired with Fowler’s other childhood fascination – dinosaurs – eventually led him to an unexpected discovery.

“I was a bit disappointed when I found out that the ‘t’ in James T. Kirk didn't stand for Tyrannosaurus,” he said.

Now, Fowler is satisfied with his decision to put his childhood interest in dinosaurs to rest, in favour of pursuing his passion for space. (It became clear to him early on that a choice between the two subjects was inevitable, since, as he put it, “there’s no such thing as space dinosaurs”.)

As Meteosat Third Generation Instrument Systems Manager, Fowler leads the team that ensures the instruments on board the MTG satellites best serve the people who use the data these instruments collect. For MTG, this began with the first user consultation workshop back in 2001, when different key users such as meteorologists and climate scientists met up to share their needs for the kinds of observations they wanted to receive from future satellites.

“When we first start developing a satellite instrument, the sky’s the limit,” said Fowler.

“But pretty early on we have to do a critical analysis of what is possible with the available technologies. At that stage, we tend to say to our partners, ‘if you produce something like that, it’s going to be massive, cost millions, and probably be 30 years in development’. So we have to shape that initial concept into something that we can actually develop in the 10-year timescale that we have available. This is what happened with the Infrared Sounder, one of the instruments on board the MTG-Sounder 1 satellite,” he continued.

After helping to translate the needs expressed by the users into requirements that can be used by industry, Fowler’s team continues to follow the instruments through many iterations and years of development, to ensure, for example, that they perform as well as they should. Their work continues until the satellite is launched – which, for MTG-S1, is planned for 2025 – at which point, they help out both the data processing and operations teams to make sure those teams have all the information they need to do their jobs well.

Despite the years of work behind them, Fowler and his team are far from finished. Even once MTG-S1 has reached its orbit, been powered on, connected to the ground stations, and sends observations, his team is ready to assist should an unexpected problem arise.

“This hasn’t happened for quite some time now, but we’re available to help out with instruments on board the previous generation of satellite, Meteosat Second Generation. If there were to be an issue with an instrument that nobody could explain, or something that needs to be dragged out of the past from our files or our memories, we could be brought back in,” he said.

“And we will continue to be involved all the way through the final testing of the MTG-Imager 4 satellite, which will be some time in 2030s. So, in a way, my team provides a helpful link in the MTG programme between the past and the future.”