The assembly of the Sentinel-1C satellite of the Copernicus Earth observation programme should be completed by mid-December, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), contacted by EUROPE on Thursday 25 August.
“The satellite qualification review, QR, which constitutes the end of phase D (Qualification and Production), will start mid-November 2022 and end mid-December. Shortly afterwards, the satellite will be transported to Kourou”, replied Daniel Mesples, the Spacecraft Operations Manager for Sentinel-5P. The launch is scheduled for the first half of 2023 and will take place on the new European light launcher, Vega-C.
One of the satellite’s missions will be to provide all-weather radar images of the Earth’s surface. It will take over from Sentinel-1B, which broke down last December (see EUROPE 12914/14) and whose mission was terminated on 3 August by the European Space Agency and the European Commission. Sentinel-1A remains fully operational.
“The absence of Sentinel-1B products has an impact on products and services delivered by four of the six Copernicus services. However, in most cases, this is a degradation of detail, rather than complete absence of products, as Sentinel-1A continues running nominally” a European Commission source told us.
This concerns in particular marine (ice detection), emergency (rapid mapping in case of disasters), security (oil spills, ship detection) and land (ground motion, soil moisture, agriculture monitoring), we were told.
In order to mitigate the impact of the absence of Sentinel-1B, the operations plan of Sentinel-1A is being optimised to compensate for parts of the reduced radar observations and additional data are acquired through the “Copernicus Contributing Missions”. “This can, however, not cover all unavailable data from Sentinel-1B”, commented our source. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)