Latest Sentinel 1 Stories

ESA An important milestone has been reached for ESA’s Sentinel-3 mission. The satellite platform has been delivered to the Prime Contractor in France where the instruments will be installed and tested along with the numerous components that make up this sophisticated new mission to monitor Earth. Once complete, Sentinel-3 will host an array of state-of-the-art instruments that mainly focus on measuring different aspects of ocean waters, such as the temperature and color of the surface...

The potential of GMES for crisis management and environmental monitoring is highlighted in a new publication with users demonstrating the importance of Earth observation data to European regions. The joint ESA-NEREUS (Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies) publication is a collection of articles that provide insight into how the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme is being used in new applications and services across Europe. The articles,...

Ground controllers from the European Space Agency (ESA) are still trying to make contact with the space agency's flagship Earth observation mission, Envisat. Radar pictures taken from the ground appear to show that the satellite is intact, but there is no confirmation that Envisat has entered the "safe mode" of an ailing spacecraft. During this mode, the spacecraft ensures the solar panel is pointed at the Sun and that onboard power systems are prioritized above all other activity....

ESA and Eurockot today signed contracts for launching two ESA satellites: Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-3A will fly in 2013 on Rockot vehicles from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia for Europe’s GMES program. The contract signing by Matthias Oehm, Chief Executive Officer of Eurockot Launch Services GmbH, and Volker Liebig, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programs, took place at the historic Chamber of Commerce of Bremen, Germany. The Senator for Economics, Labor and Ports of...

Originally designed to monitor Earth for just three years, ESA's veteran ERS-2 satellite is still in orbit and going strong after 15 years of delivering essential data to improve our understanding of Earth and climate change. ERS-2 was launched on 21 April 1995 to follow on from the first European Remote-Sensing mission, ERS-1, which had been in orbit since 1991. At the time, these two satellites were the most sophisticated European Earth observation spacecraft ever developed, delivering...

Marking another significant step in the GMES initiative, ESA and Thales Alenia Space recently signed a contract worth €270 million ($372 million USD) to build the second Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-3 satellites.Led by the European Commission in partnership with ESA, the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program will provide a unique tool to monitor the environment. This initiative will fulfill policy-makers' growing needs to access accurate and timely information to...

ESA Member States have unanimously voted to extend the Envisat mission through to 2013. Envisat "“ the world's largest and most sophisticated satellite ever built "“ has been providing scientists and operational users with invaluable data for global monitoring and forecasting since its launch in 2002."The decision to extend the Envisat mission operations, taken during the last ESA Earth Observation Program Board meeting, is a recognition of the success of the mission, in terms of the...

Based on the outstanding success of the first tandem mission between ERS-2 and Envisat last year, ESA has paired the two satellites together again to help improve our understanding of the planet. ERS-2, ESA's veteran spacecraft, and Envisat, the largest environmental satellite ever built, both carry Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments that provide high resolution images of the Earth's surface.By combining two or more SAR images of the same site, slight alterations that may have...

The Arctic is undergoing rapid transformation due to climate change, pollution and human activity. ESA's ERS and Envisat satellites have been providing satellite data of the region for the last 17 years. These long term data sets in combination with ESA's future missions will be key in implementing the newly adopted European Commission policy called 'The European Union and the Arctic Region'.The policy highlights new opportunities in the region such as the opening up of long-sought...

Launched from Kourou in French Guiana on the night of 28 February 2002, ESA's Envisat spacecraft marks its fifth year in space. Having orbited Earth more than 26,000 times, the world's largest and most complex environmental satellite ever launched has travelled a distance of more than 1,000,000,000 kilometres, nearly the equivalent of travelling to Jupiter and back.Generating some 280 Gigabytes of data products daily, Envisat has gathered 500 Terabytes to date. The amount of data returned by...