Europe's next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

Europe just unveiled first images from its new Meteosat Third Generation “Sounder” satellite, and the comments came in hotter than the Sahara it captured. The hype: Europe flexed a sleek “heat cam” and “humidity cam” from geostationary orbit, plus a dramatic clip tracking an Ethiopian volcano’s ash plume. The pushback: users aren’t buying pretty pictures without proof. One camp demanded hard numbers — “how much better will forecasts get?” — asking for error scores in plain English. Another camp grilled the open data question: will the public get access or is this a paywalled science project? A helpful commenter pointed to EUMETSAT for how the data gets used, but the thread still simmered over transparency. Meanwhile, Europe’s space swagger stirred rivalry energy — “less dependent on SpaceX and NASA” became a rallying cry — with startups like ISAR Aerospace getting name-dropped like opening acts. And then the meme machine revved up: eagle-eyed viewers spotted “triangular chunks” missing in the corners of the global image and joked that Earth needs a patch update. In short, everyone agrees the tech looks awesome, but the crowd wants receipts, public access, and someone to check those corners.