Astrium has been appointed by ESA to be the prime contractor to build Sentinel-2, the first optical satellite in the Sentinel series.
The main industrial contract worth €195m was signed yesterday by Volker Liebig, ESA´s director of Earth observation at ESA, Evert Dudok, CEO Astrium Satellites and Uwe Minne, Astrium´s director of Earth Observation and Science in
According to Astrium, Sentinel-2 will provide a permanent record of comprehensive data to help inform the agricultural and forestry industry sectors as well as disaster control and humanitarian relief programmes. Sentinel-2 will also be able to observe natural disasters such as floods, volcanic eruptions, subsidence and landslides.
In the Sentinel-2 mission programme, Astrium in
Sentinel-2 is intended to image the Earth’s landmasses from its orbit for at least 7.25 years. In addition, its on-board resources will be designed so that the mission can be prolonged by an extra five years. From 2012 onwards, the 1.1-metric-ton satellite will circle the Earth in a sun-synchronous, polar orbit at an altitude of 786km, fully covering the planet’s landmasses in ten days. Its multi-spectral instrument (MSI) will generate optical images in 13 spectral channels in the visible and short wave infrared range down to a resolution of 10m with an image width of 290km.
In the future it is planned to extend the overall Sentinel-2 system by a second satellite, so that by operating the two satellites simultaneously, it will be possible to cover the planet’s landmass every five days.
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