Brussels, 04/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - The night of Thursday 3 April saw a textbook launch of Sentinel 1A, the satellite which lays the foundation stone of Copernicus, the European Earth monitoring programme. Sentinel 1A took off from the station at Kourou in French Guiana using a Russian Soyuz launcher, before being sent into orbit by the European Space Agency. This satellite will be joined by a dozen others over the next five specialist missions to take place between now and 2022, to form the final constellation. However, this first satellite will be able to feed back reliable information on its own.
“Thanks to Sentinel 1A, new eyes will observe our Earth as never before, and these eyes will be European ones!”, said European Commissioner for Industry Antonio Tajani, who fought to ensure that the scheduled launch was stuck to. The Sentinel 1A satellite will work with a Sentinel 1B, to be launched within the year. It will transmit, free of charge and freely accessible, data collected using its synthetic aperture radar on all of the continental masses, coastal areas and maritime routes, covering all of the planet's oceans. This information will help to reinforce maritime security, monitor climate change and provide assistance in the event of earthquakes, landslides or flooding. Sentinel 1A replaces the European satellite Envisat, which was decommissioned in 2012. It is the result of cooperation between Thales Alenia Italy, Airbus DS Germany and Airbus DS UK.
The Copernicus programme is jointly funded and managed by the member states of the EU, the European Space Agency and the European Commission. The programme relies on investments in the order of 4.3 billion over the period 2014-2020. The European Commission forecasts that, between now and 2030, its economic impact will be in the region of €30 billion and that 50,000 jobs could be created in Europe, through the development of satellite products and services. (MD)