The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission is the first of the Sentinel dedicated missions, developed and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) in the frame of the Copernicus Earth Observation programme led by the European Union (EU). Sentinel-1 is based on a constellation of two SAR satellites that ensure continuity of C-band SAR observations for Europe. Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B have been launched from Kourou on a Soyuz rocket on 3rd April 2014 and 25th April 2016 respectively.

The routine operations of the constellation are on-going and performed at full mission capacity. The mission is characterized by large-scale and repetitive observations, systematic production and a free and open data distribution policy. Sentinel-1 data are routinely used by Copernicus and many operational services, as well as in the scientific and commercial domain. The mission has allowed the development of many applications in various areas over land and seas, for routine monitoring or support to emergency management actions.

The presentation will address the mission status including an outlook on the foreseen evolutions, for instance in terms of constellation evolution (including the new concept of a satellite in stand-by in orbit), observation scenario, and products/services provided to users.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 is an Earth Observation mission developed and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) in the frame of the Copernicus Earth observation programme of the European Union (EU).

The mission features a Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) on board a constellation of two satellites: Sentinel-2A, launched in June 2015, and Sentinel-2B, launched in March 2017. Two additional satellites (Sentinel-2C and Sentinel-2D) are in production and will allow the extension of the mission, to reach typically 2 decades of seamless observations.

The Sentinel-2 mission offers an unprecedented combination of systematic global coverage of land and coastal areas, a high revisit of five days under the same viewing conditions, high spatial resolution (10, 20 and 60m depending on which spectral band), and a wide field of view for multispectral observations from 13 bands in the visible, near infra-red and short wave infra-red regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission provides data to a large range of services and applications in many domains (e.g. land monitoring, marine environment monitoring, atmosphere monitoring, emergencies management and security) relying on multi-spectral high spatial resolution optical observations over global terrestrial and coastal regions.

Since the launch of the first satellite unit in 2015, Sentinel-2 mission has been a major asset of the Copernicus programme, as enabler of a large amount and range of downstream applications, services and scientific publications/results. Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission has become the most cited European mission in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Sentinel-2 is as well a Sentinel mis-sion with the largest data volumes being distributed. This could be achieved thanks to its data coverage, its excellent radiometric and geometric data quality, and its free & open data access policy.

This presentation provides an update on the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission operations status, including an outlook on the foreseen evolutions (for instance in terms of constellation evolution, observation scenario, and products/services provided to users).

Copernicus Sentinel-3 is an Earth Observation mission operated jointly by EUMETSAT and the European Space Agency (ESA) in the frame of the Copernicus Earth Observation programme of the European Union (EU).

The mission features an optical suite of instruments (OLCI and SLSTR) and an altimeter (SRAL) plus a set of support instruments for precise orbit determination and wet tropospheric correction (DORIS, LRR, GNSS, MWR), each on board a constellation of two satellites: Sentinel-3A, launched in February 2016, and Sentinel-3B, launched in April 2018.
The main objective of the Sentinel-3 mission is to measure sea surface topography, sea and land surface temperature, and ocean and land surface colour with high accuracy and reliability to support ocean forecasting systems, environmental and climate monitoring. In addition a set of atmospheric products has been developed.

Since the launch of the first satellite unit in 2016, the Sentinel-3 mission has been a major asset of the Copernicus programme, delivering a large range of user data and services as an operational mission as well as extensive scientific publications/results.

This presentation provides an update on the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission operations status, including an outlook of the foreseen evolutions.

The Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor mission, launched on Oct. 13 2017, is the first atmospheric Sentinel and supports Copernicus services in particular for atmospheric applications, including activities such as air quality, ozone and climate monitoring and forecasting. The instrument TROPOMI (Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument) is the single payload of the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite and was co-funded by ESA and The Netherlands. Sentinel-5 Precursor ensures on the one hand continuity of atmospheric satellite data provision for the ESA ERS (GOME), ENVISAT (SCIAMACHY), and the USA EOS-AURA (OMI) missions in the various application and scientific domains and prepares on the other hand for the future atmospheric Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5 instruments hosted on EUMETSAT platforms. Key features of the TROPOMI instrument are to have global coverage within one day and providing a spatial resolution of about 5.5 x 3.5 km (directly below the satellite). All 13 Sentinel-5P products have been released in staggered approach to the public starting during July 2018. The latest release took place during November 2021 including the Ozone Profile product. All data are provided to the public through the Copernicus Open Data Access Hub at https://scihub.copernicus.eu/. This presentation provides information about the Sentinel-5 Precursor mission status and latest results using TROPOMI measurements.

Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich (Sentinel-6 MF) is an Earth Observation mission operated jointly by EUMETSAT, ESA, NASA/JPL, NOAA, and CNES, with EUMETSAT assuming the overall system responsibility. The roles and responsibilities of each of the partners capitalise on the expertise of the various programme partners, optimising the mission’s operations efficiency and financial investment. The mission is part of the Copernicus component of the EU Space Programme of the European Union (EU).

The primary mission objective is to provide continuity of ocean topography measurements beyond the TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason, OSTM/Jason-2, and Jason-3 cooperative missions, for determining sea surface height, ocean circulation, and sea level. The Sentinel-6 MF mission is designed to ensure the continuity of the nearly 30-year existing Global Mean Sea Level record (GMLS), taking the baton from the aging Jason-3 satellite as the reference altimetry mission in the Ocean Surface Topography Virtual Constellations of the Committee for Earth Observation Satellites (OST VC CEOS).

An innovative aspect of the Sentinel-6 MF is the on-board Poseidon-4 altimeter instrument, capable of providing at the same time the traditional low-resolution measurements (comparable to the Jason-3 LRM or Low Resolution Mode) and high-resolution SAR measurements (Synthetic Aperture Radar). The simultaneous provision of this data makes the Sentinel-6 MF mission the first of its kind in operations.

The Sentinel-6 MF instrument portfolio on-board related to the operations of the altimetry mission is complemented by European GNSS-POD and DORIS receivers, as well as by an Advance Microwave Radiometer with Climate capability (AMR-C) and Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA) provided by NASA/JPL.

A secondary mission objective is the collection of high-resolution vertical profiles of atmospheric temperature using GNSS Radio Occultation sounding technique, to assess changes in the troposphere and the stratosphere, and to support numerical weather predictions. The GNSS-RO receiver is provided by NASA/JPL.

The paper will focus on the Copernicus Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich mission operations status, providing also an outlook of the foreseen evolutions.

The operations of the Sentinel missions rely on the Copernicus Space Component Sentinels Ground Segment (CSC GS). The CSC GS plans the instrument observation and ensures the acquisition of Satellite data and all operations required to generate the User Level Data and make it available for user exploitation. By end 2021, more than 45 million products have been made available for open and free user access, with more than 400 PB of data downloaded by users. A major transformation of the Ground Segment architecture and operations concept is being achieved, allowing to further enhance the operations flexibility and robustness as well as to increase the capability to adapt to the user demand and needs. The new Copernicus Space Component Sentinels Ground Segment relies on an open architecture favouring the development and operations of industrial services reusable in different environments, including in commercial context. By doing so, ESA intends to foster the development of a long term European ecosystem at the edge of innovation while preventing industrial and technical locking and preserving user data sovereignty in a secure and safe environment.
The availability of such open ecosystem will foster the development and exploitation of user applications in a federated and unified environment ready to be reused in the frame of private or public initiatives, maximising the potential of Copernicus and optimising the federation with other European initiatives such as DestinE.