Weather forecast based satellite operations at ESA: architecture implementation and validation

The paper reports about the on-going introduction of weather forecast based operations (WFBO) into the operations of ESA satellite missions. The strategic capability will ensure a leap step in data rate/volume performance from science and exploration missions, as well as an enhanced availability of missions’ operations. After previous works focusing on the architecture definition and on the proof of concept, the present account describes in more detail the operational setup which has been adopted, to transit from the initial breadboard development to an operational capability, and the systematic validation based on satellite pass data.