Sentinel 2A

Spacecraft nº:

ESA spacecraft nº: 93

Launch data: Designation  40697 / 15028A Launch date  23 Jun 2015 - 01:51 UT Launch site  Ko, ZLV Launch vehicle  Vega (VV-05) Mission  Earth observation (Ocean), Imaging Earth orbit: Perigee / Apogee  787 x 788 km Eccentricity   Inclination  98.7 ° Period   min

Spacecraft data:

Description:

• Sentinel-2 will deliver crucial data for information services to the EU and its Member States under GMES. The services fed by it cover areas such as climate change, sustainable development, environmental policies, European civil protection, common agricultural policy, development aid, humanitarian aid and the Common Foreign & Security Policy.
• Sentinel-2 will support the operational generation of products such as the mapping of land cover, land use, change detection and geophysical variables. The mission objective is systematic coverage of the earth's land surface (from -56° to +83° latitude) to produce cloud-free imagery typically every 15 to 30 days over Europe.
• Sentinel-2 features a 290 km-wide coverage, 10-20 m spatial resolution, 13 optical channel instrument (operating from visible-near infrared to shortwave infrared) and will ensure enhanced-quality continuity with existing missions SPOT and Landsat. It will provide improved revisit time, swath width, coverage area, spectral bands, calibration and image quality. These features will enable it to contribute effectively to GMES needs for operational land and emergency services.

Mission details:

• Arianespace´s Vega VV05 mission placed the European Space Agency´s Sentinel 2A visible/IR Earth observing satellite in a 787 x 788 km sun-synchronous orbit on Jun 23, 2015. The visible camera has 10 metre resolution and a 290 km swath.
• The Vega is an Italian-build small launch vehicle with three solid stages and a liquid fourth stage, the AVUM.
  The AVUM upper stage was meant to deorbit itself, according to the Arianespace press kit, but instead ended up as space junk in a 400 x 783 km orbit from which it should re-enter in a few years.