The GMES Sentinel-2 Operational Mission

ESA bulletin. Bulletin ASE. European Space Agency

T he ESA Sentinels will be the first series of loperational satellites to meet the Earth observation needs of the European Union-ESA Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme. The pair of Sentinel-2 satellites will routinely provide high-resolution (10–20 m) optical images globally with frequent revisits tailored to the needs of GMES land and emergency services. Sentinel-2 aims at ensuring continuity of Spot-and Landsat-type data, with improvements to allow service evolution. The first launch is expected in 2012. What Users Need The pair of Sentinel-2 satellites will routinely generate valuable information for the European Union (EU) and its Member States as part of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme, in the areas of global climate change (Kyoto Protocol and ensuing regulations), sustainable development, European environmental policies (such as spatial planning for the Soil Thematic Strategy, Natura 2000, and the Water Framework...

Remote Sensing of Environment, 2012

is in charge of Sentinel-2 image quality activities, including monitoring mission performance and assisting ESA with the prototyping, development and verification of payload data processing and product quality monitoring.-DLR, Bonn, Germany: H. Hauschildt, R. Meyer and S. Phillip-May. DLR is responsible for providing the Optical Communication Payload (OCP), developed by Tesat (Germany), which is expected to enhance the distribution of mission data to receiving and processing stations in real time through Alphasat and later on EDRS. Members of the industrial consortium led by Astrium GmbH (platform and satellite system) and Astrium SAS (MultiSpectral Instrument), in particular the project managers H. Sontag and V. Cazaubiel and their teams for their significant contributions to the design, development, integration, testing and verification of the Sentinel-2 satellite system.

2007 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2007

Esa Bulletin-european Space Agency, 2007

The pair of Senteniel-3 satellites will provide global, frequent and near-realtime ocean, ice and land monitoring. It continues Envisat's altimetry, the multispectral, medium-resolution visible and infrared ocean and land-surface observations of ERS, Envisat and Spot, and includes enhancements to meet the operational revisit requirements and to facilitate new products and evolution of services. The first launch is expected in 2011/2012.

Remote Sensing of Environment, 2012

In the frame of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Space Component programme, the European Space Agency (ESA) undertook the development of a European Radar Observatory (Sentinel-1), a polar orbiting two-satellite constellation for the continuation and improvement of SAR operational services and applications. Satellite and payload are being built to provide routine, day-and-night, all-weather medium (typically 10 m) resolution observation capability. Ground infrastructure is provided for planning, mission control, data processing, dissemination and archiving. Free and open data access is provided. Data quality of the Sentinel-1 data products is shown along with uncertainty estimation of retrieved information products confirming specified performance and indicating application growth potential. The unique data availability performance of the Sentinel-1 routine operations makes the mission particularly suitable for emergency response support, marine surveillance, ice monitoring and interferometric applications such as detection of subsidence and landslides.

Keywords: Earth observation monitoring environment satellite Sentinels services atmosphere ocean land emergency response climate change security user requirements data products data policy Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) is the most ambitious operational Earth Observation programme to date and will provide global, timely and easily accessible information in application domains such as land, marine, atmosphere, emergency response, climate change and security. To accomplish this, the European Union (EU)-led GMES programme comprises three components namely the space component, the in-situ component and the service component. The space component, led by ESA, is in its pre-operational stage, serving users with satellite data acquired by the so called "GMES Contributing Mis-sions" already available today or planned at European, national and international level. It will become operational once the dedicated space infrastructure, comprised by the "Sentinel" missions and their corresponding ground segments are operational. The first of these satellite series will be launched in 2013. The Sentinel missions will provide a unique set of observations utilising different techniques spanning C-band SAR, mid to medium resolution optical and thermal observations with increased spectral resolution, al-timeter and dedicated spectrometers for atmospheric chemistry. This data, combined with in-situ data, some assimilated into models, will then be turned into services for monitoring the environment, the climate and for security related issues. The GMES Space Component (GSC) is organised in two overlapping phases: the development phase and the operational phase, the latter planned to start in 2014. The main challenge is now to ensure the programme's long-term sustainability.

International Journal of Digital Earth

Sentinel-2 scenes are increasingly being used in operational Earth observation (EO) applications at regional, continental and global scales, in near-real time applications, and with multi-temporal approaches. On a broader scale, they are therefore one of the most important facilitators of the Digital Earth. However, the data quality and availability are not spatially and temporally homogeneous due to effects related to cloudiness, the position on the Earth or the acquisition plan. The spatiotemporal inhomogeneity of the underlying data may therefore affect any big remote sensing analysis and is important to consider. This study presents an assessment of the metadata for all accessible Sentinel-2 Level-1C scenes acquired in 2017, enabling the spatio-temporal coverage and availability to be quantified, including scene availability and cloudiness. Spatial exploratory analysis of the global, multi-temporal metadata also reveals that higher acquisition frequencies do not necessarily yield more cloud-free scenes and exposes metadata quality issues, e.g. systematically incorrect cloud cover estimation in high, nonvegetated altitudes. The continuously updated datasets and analysis results are accessible as a Web application called EO-Compass. It contributes to a better understanding and selection of Sentinel-2 scenes, and improves the planning and interpretation of remote sensing analyses.

Proc. 4th Int. Workshop …, 2009

The ESA Sentinels constitute the first series of operational satellites responding to the Earth Observation needs of the EU-ESA Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme. The GMES space component relies on existing and planned ...

Remote Sensing, 2016

The availability of new generation multispectral sensors of the Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 satellite platforms offers unprecedented opportunities for long-term high-frequency monitoring applications. The present letter aims at highlighting some potentials and challenges deriving from the spectral and spatial characteristics of the two instruments. Some comparisons between corresponding bands and band combinations were performed on the basis of different datasets: the first consists of a set of simulated images derived from a hyperspectral Hyperion image, the other five consist instead of pairs of real images (Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2A) acquired on the same date, over five areas. Results point out that in most cases the two sensors can be well combined; however, some issues arise regarding near-infrared bands when Sentinel-2 data are combined with both Landsat 8 and older Landsat images.

Remote Sensing of Environment, 2012

The spatial and temporal characteristics of the new Sentinel missions, primarily designed to provide routine multidisciplinary observations for operational services, are also very suitable for addressing some of the challenges associated with advancing Earth System sciences. The Sentinels are ensuring long-term observational commitment and will operate a range of instruments with different spectral bands and spatial resolutions with global coverage and high revisit times. The complexity of Earth System models has been increasing gradually and most simulations of future climate and Earth system evolution are based on coupled models that include aspects of physics, bio/geo-chemistry, anthropogenic impacts and even recently some elements of socioeconomic factors. Sentinels will provide unique observations to describe such coupled atmosphere, oceans, land and cryosphere and the exchanges among them into Earth System models. This paper emphasizes the indispensable value of the data provided by the family of Sentinel constellations in the context of the urgent need for improved process understanding of the Earth system.