ESA Sentinel-1: First Copernicus satellite now operational - Video

Napa Valley quake. 

Credit: Copernicus data (2014) /ESA /PPO.labs /Norut /COMET-SEOM Insarap study

With the commissioning of ESA's Sentinel-1A completed and the satellite's transfer to the team in charge of its exploitation, its data are available as of today to all users.

This marks the beginning of the satellite's operational life, delivering radar coverage for an array of applications in the areas of oceans, ice, changing land and emergency response.

Project Manager Ramón Torres, who led the development team, formally handed over the satellite to the Mission Manager, Pierre Potin.

"The time has arrived for the satellite to exploit its extraordinary capabilities and start helping users," said Ramón.

A leap forward from ESA's earlier Envisat, the unprecedented quality of ESA's Sentinel-1A will ensure that all users' needs are fully met.

"Of course, saying farewell is always difficult, but I am confident that it is in capable and safe hands for the next stage of its journey."

Launched on 3 April, ESA's Sentinel-1A completed commissioning on 23 September, an important process that ensures the satellite, instruments, data acquisition and data processing procedures are working well.

Not only did ESA's Sentinel-1A pass these tests and reach its target orbit on 7 August, eight anticollision manoeuvres to avoid space debris were performed during this phase.



ESA's Sentinel-1A is the first satellite dedicated to Europe’s Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. 

This new satellite carries an advanced synthetic aperture radar that works in several specialised modes to provide detailed imagery for monitoring the oceans, including shipping lanes, sea ice and oil spills. 

It also provides data to map changing land cover, ground deformation, ice shelves and glaciers, and can be used to help emergency response when disasters such as floods strike and to support humanitarian relief efforts at times of crisis. 

Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The satellite will now begin delivering radar scans for an array of operational services and scientific research.

"My main objective is to ensure that ESA's Sentinel-1A fulfils the high expectations from the various operational services and scientific users," notes Pierre.

"Looking at the satellite and ground segment performance, as demonstrated during the commissioning, as well as the preliminary results achieved so far, I'm confident that the mission will be a great success."

The satellite will continue to be monitored, operated and controlled from ESA's Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.



The Sentinels are a new fleet of ESA satellite poised to deliver the wealth of data and imagery that are central to Europe's Copernicus programme.

By offering a set of key information services for a broad range of applications, this global monitoring programme is a step change in the way we manage our environment, understand and tackle the effects of climate change, and safeguard everyday lives.

ESA's Sentinel-1A, a two-satellite constellation, is the first in the series and carries an advanced radar to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth's surface.

Comet ISON Now Visible to Naked Eye After Outburst - Video

The much-anticipated Comet ISON is now visible to the naked eye according to reports from many observers.

Comet ISON — the potential "comet of the century" — has suddenly brightened in an outburst of activity with just two weeks to go before it grazes the surface of the sun.

In recent months, Comet ISON has repeatedly befuddled forecasters trying to anticipate just how bright it will ultimately become. But earlier this week, the comet's brightening trend again seemed to sputtering and stalling, but more recent observations suggest a sudden and radical upsurge in brightness.

NEO Asteroid Detection: NASA's Arecibo now and ATLAS in the future

Arecibo Radio Telescope

The NEO program at NASA currently detects and tracks Earth-approaching asteroids and comets with land-based and orbiting telescopes. Scientists estimate their mass and orbit to gauge whether they pose a danger.

With this system, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which has an antenna 305 meters in diameter, can observe with great sensitivity a third of the night sky and detect asteroids that are on the large side.

All asteroid observations made anywhere in the world by telescopes, even by amateur star gazers, must be passed on to the Minor Planet Center, which is financed by NASA and run by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for the Paris-based International Astronomical Union.

But in times of tight budgets like these, NASA is trying to develop other systems specifically capable of tracking small objects in space.

NASA is financing to the tune of $5 million a project at the University of Hawaii called Atlas, or Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Alert System.

Researchers say ATLAS, which will monitor the entire visible sky every night, will be able to detect objects 45 meters (yards) in diameter a week before they hit our planet.

For those measuring 150 meters (yards) in diameter, the system -- which could be operational in late 2015 -- will give a three week heads up.

The goal is to find the objects and give enough advance warning for measures to be taken to protect people, said John Tonry, the principal investigator at ATLAS.

The system has enough sensitivity to detect a match flame in New York City when viewed from San Francisco, for instance.

"That's enough time to evacuate the area of people, take measures to protect buildings and other infrastructures and be alert to a tsunami danger generated by ocean impacts," according to the ATLAS website.

ATLAS will complement the Institute for Astronomy’s Pan-STARRS project, a system that searches for large “killer asteroids” years, decades, and even centuries before impact with Earth.

Whereas Pan-STARRS takes a month to complete one sweep of the sky in a deep but narrow survey, ATLAS will search the sky in a closer and wider path to help identify the smaller asteroids that hit Earth more frequently.

ESA's SOHO Archive is now online

The SOHO science archive is the first in a series of new generation scientific archives being developed and implemented by the Science Archives and Virtual Observatory Team at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Spain.

These archives will contribute to preserving the legacy of ESA's science missions by conserving and providing access to data from all of these missions.

Access to data from the ESA-NASA SOHO mission has just become easier with the launch of a new SOHO science archive with enhanced capabilities for searching and visualising the vast SOHO data archive. This is the first in a new generation of science archives under development at ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre.

Since operations began in 1995 the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been transmitting data from its twelve scientific instruments back to Earth at a rate of 1 Gigabyte per day.

Analysis of this data has resulted in ground-breaking scientific results which have included the first images of a star's convection zone and the structure of sunspots below the photosphere; the most precise measurements of the temperature structure, interior rotation, and gas flow in the solar interior; the discovery of new dynamic phenomena such as coronal waves and solar tornadoes, and the discovery of more than 1600 comets.

The recently launched ESA SOHO Science Archive allows for seamless access to the complete archive of science data sets from the 12 instruments as soon as the data are processed.