GMES Sentinel-1 mission

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 10m) 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. ► Sentinel-1 is designed to work in a pre-programmed conflict-free operation mode. ► A consistent data archive is built for applications based on long time series. ► The two-satellite constellation offers six-day exact repeat. ► The Sentinel-1 mission represents an n-fold evolution of capability. ► Access to the Canadian C-band SAR Constellation may improve overall performance.