Conference Agenda

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Copernicus is the European system for monitoring the Earth. It consists of a complex set of instruments which collect data from multiple sources: earth observation satellites and in situ sensors. It processes these data and provides users with reliable and up-to-date information through a set of operational services related to environmental and security issues. The Copernicus Land service supports a wide range of applications including environment protection, management of urban areas, regional and local planning, agriculture, forestry, and sustainable development. Under its global component, the service delivers biophysical variables including land cover – land use information at different resolution. The main users of Copernicus services are policymakers and public authorities who need the information to develop and to monitor environmental legislation and policies including development policies. The Copernicus programme is coordinated and managed by the European Commission.

As part of the European Copernicus programme, the Sentinel-1 mission, based on a constellation of two SAR satellites, ensures continuity for Europe of C-band SAR observations. Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B were respectively launched from Kourou on 3rd April 2014 and 25th April 2016.

Full Operations Capacity (FOC) of the mission is expected to be achieved following the completion of the operational qualification of the Sentinel-1 constellation (Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B), by mid-2017 indicatively.

The presentation will give an overview of the overall mission status at the time of the workshop and will focus on the routine operations activities of the constellation. Topics including mission achievements, mission observation scenario of the constellation, ground segment operations performance, throughput and data access will be presented.

Copernicus is a joint programme of the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA), designed to establish a European capacity for the provision and use of operational monitoring information for environment and security applications.

Within the Copernicus programme, ESA is responsible for the development of the Space Component, a fully operational space-based capability to supply earth-observation data to sustain environmental information Services in Europe.

The Sentinel missions are Copernicus dedicated Earth Observation missions composing the essential elements of the Space Component. In the global Copernicus framework, they are complemented by other satellites made available by third-parties or by ESA and coordinated in the synergistic system through the Copernicus Data-Access system versus the Copernicus Services.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission provides continuity to services relying on multi-spectral high-resolution optical observations over global terrestrial surfaces [1]. Sentinel-2 will capitalize on the technology and the vast experience acquired in Europe and the US to sustain the operational supply of data for services such as forest monitoring, land cover changes detection or natural disasters management.

The Sentinel-2 mission offers an unprecedented combination of the following capabilities:

○ Systematic global coverage of land surfaces: from 56°South to 84°North, coastal waters and Mediterranean sea;

○ High revisit: every 5 days at equator under the same viewing conditions with 2 satellites;

○ High spatial resolution: 10m, 20m and 60m;

○ Multi-spectral information with 13 bands in the visible, near infra-red and short wave infra-red part of the spectrum;

○ Wide field of view: 290 km.

The data from the Sentinel-2 mission are available openly and freely for all users with online easy access since December 2015. The presentation will give a status report on the Sentinel-2 mission, and outlook for the remaining ramp-up Phase, the completion of the constellation and a view to ongoing evolutions.

The first satellite of the Sentinel-3 constellation, Sentinel-3A, was launched in February 2016, with a launch of Sentinel-3B being expected at the end of 2017. The main objectives of the Sentinel-3 constellation, building on the heritage of ESA’s ERS and ENVISAT missions, are to measure sea-surface topography, sea- and land-surface temperature and ocean- and land-surface colour in support of ocean forecasting systems, and for environmental and climate monitoring. The series of Sentinel-3 satellites will ensure global, frequent and near-real time ocean, ice and land monitoring, with the provision of observation data in a routine, long-term (up to 20 years of operations) and continuous fashion, with a consistent quality and a high level of reliability and availability.
Sentinel-3A passed its commissioning phase in July 2016 and is now in the so called ramp-up phase, leading to full operational capacity in spring 2017. The Sentinel-3 missions is jointly operated by ESA and EUMETSAT. ESA will be responsible for the data acquisition, satellite and payload long-term performance monitoring and the operations, maintenance and evolution of the Sentinel-3 ground segment on land related products and EUMETSAT on the marine products and the satellite monitoring and control.
The presentation will give an overview of the overall mission status at the time of the workshop and provide in particular an overview on the status of the Sentinel-3 core data products and their provision in the mission’s ramp-up phase.