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Sentinel-2
The 1,140 kg European Sentinel-2A satellite lifted off from Kourou atop a Vega launcher on 23rd June 2015. Its twin Sentinel-2B joined it in the same 786-km orbit on 7 March 2017. Together, they will deliver images with a ground swath of 290 km and a resolution of 10 x 60 m every 5 days, ranging from visible to mid-infrared wavelengths.
This imagery serves a broad range of applications, monitoring crop and forest growth, land occupancy, farming practices and yields, or coasts, helping scientists to better understand the mechanisms and impacts of the climate system. It also aids humanitarian organizations and governments to respond to emergencies such as landslides, volcano eruptions, floods, and other natural disasters.
Drawing on the heritage of NASA’s Landsat and CNES’s SPOT programmes, the Sentinel-2 mission is part of the European Union’s Copernicus global environmental monitoring and security programme. The European Space Agency (ESA) has led the development of the 2 satellites, their instruments, and the ground segment. The spacecraft have been designed and built by a consortium of 60 firms headed by Airbus Defence & Space. Under a cooperation agreement, CNES developed the prototype for the data processing ground segment, defined and prototyped level 1 image processing procedures, and developed an image quality system and a level 2 (cloud detection and atmospheric corrections) image processing demonstrator. CNES makes Sentinel-2 data available for free on the Internet via its PEPS Sentinel Product Exploitation Platform, and delivers products corrected for atmospheric effects through the Theia land surfaces data hub.
Mission's news feed
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Parasol satellite mission could be extended
Parasol completed its 6th year in orbit on 18 December 2010. This mission to observe clouds and aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere has been a great a success for CNES, which is now...
January 19, 2011
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Parasol moves off the A-Train’s track
Before the Parasol satellite runs out of fuel, CNES has decided to take it off the A-Train, where it has been probing Earth’s atmosphere with its companions for 5 years.
January 13, 2010
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Parasol in the eye of the storm
Late February, Cyclone Gamede brushed past Réunion, leaving 2 dead, 100 injured and more than 100 million euros in damage. CNES’s Parasol cloud- and aerosol-observing satellite...
February 27, 2007