THIS morning a dozen experts from various parts of Europe will descend on Met Eireann's headquarters in Glasnevin to discuss procurement. Their sphere of interest has nothing to do with demi-mondes so vividly described, for example, by Harriette Wilson, the one-time confidante of the Duke of Wellington whose famous memoirs began "I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of 15, the mistress of the Earl of Craven." These experts are concerned with EUMETSAT, the European Meteorological Satellite Organisation, and the ways and means by which it acquires the goods and services it needs to do its job.
EUMETSAT, with headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany, is a co-operative venture by 17 European nations to launch weather satellites and make the date from them available to forecasters in Europe and elsewhere. The organisation currently operates the Meteosat series of weather satellites, "geostationary" spacecraft that circle the earth 22,000 miles or so above the equator, with their speed in orbit matched exactly to that of the rotating earth below.
In his carefully chosen orbit, a Meteosat satellite appears to an observer on the ground to be fixed in space over a point where the equator cuts the west coast of Africa - an arrangement which allows it to collect images of the same area of the globe all the time. The first of the series, Meteosat-1, was launched in 1977, but since the spacecraft have a limited lifetime, replacements have been launched at regular intervals since then; the current occupant of this celestial vantage point is Meteosat-6, and the last in the series, Metcosat-7, is scheduled for launch later this year.
EUMETSAT also has ambitious plans for the future. The first of the next series of satellites, Meteosat Second Generation, is already planned for launch around the turn of the century, with instruments aboard that will be much more versatile than those aboard the current spacecraft. And there are also plans for a European series of polar-orbiting weather satellites - satellites that travel around the globe from pole to pole, following as it were the lines of longitude, and which, being only 500 miles or so above the earth, can collect more detailed information than the geostationaries.
In order to achieve these objectives, the organisation will have to invest millions of pounds in equipment, services and expertise over the next several years. The purpose of this Dublin meeting is to formulate the rules by which the successful contractors for the various projects will be chosen, to ensure value for money for the organisation itself and fair play for all potential suppliers of facilities.