Recent Progress of Fengyun Meteorology Satellites

After nearly 50 years of development, Fengyun (FY) satellite ushered in its best moment. China has become one of the three countries or units in the world (China, USA, and EU) that maintain both polar orbit and geostationary orbit satellites operationally. Up to now, there are 17 Fengyun (FY) satellites that have been launched successfully since 1988. There are two FY polar orbital satellites and four FY geostationary orbit satellites operate in the space to provide a huge amount of the earth observation data to the user communities. The FY satellite data has been applied not only in the meteorological but also in agriculture, hydraulic engineering, environmental, education, scientific research and other fields. More recently, three meteorological satellites have been launched within the past two years. They are FY-4A on 11 December 2016, FY-3D on 15 November 2017 and FY-2H on 5 June 2018. This paper introduces the current status of FY meteorological satellites and data service. The updates of the latest three satellites have been addressed. The characteristics of their payloads on-boarding have been specified in details and the benefit fields have been anticipated separately.