ASM
Contract Signed for Sentinel-3
The European Space Agency has awarded a €305 million contract to Thales Alenia Space under which Thales will provide the first Sentinel earth observation satellite. As prime contractor, the company is responsible for the satellite’s design, development and integration.
Thales Alenia Space has been closely involved with the project since ESA carried out the project definition in 2005/6. Thales was the leader of an industrial consortium that advised ESA on the project.
The launch of the first Sentinel-3 satellite is planned for 2012. It will be devoted to oceanography and land-vegetation monitoring.
The satellite will be part of the European Global Monitoring for Environment and Security program. GMES aims at delivering environment and security monitoring services. It is led by the European Commission.
GMES is Europe’s response to the demand for effective environmental policies. It is also the European contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
ESA is responsible for the implementation of the GMES space component, a package of earth observation missions involving ESA, member states of the European Union and other partners. Sentinel consists of five families of satellites. Sentinel-1 will be synthetic aperture radars. Sentinel-2 will perform follow-on missions for SPOT/Landsat class vehicles. Satellites in this family will have optical and infra red sensors.
Sentinel-3 is devoted to ocean monitoring and is a follow-on to some of the Envisat/ERS-2 instruments. Sentinel-4 and -5 will be devoted to improved understanding of atmospheric chemistry.
The Sentinel-3 mission will produce a consistent, long-term set of marine and land data for operational ocean state analysis, forecasting and service provision. A comprehensive measurement system facilitating global ocean and land observation is required to provide data for advanced numerical forecasting models.
Sentinel-3 will determine parameters such as sea surface topography, sea and land surface temperature, ocean colour and land colour with high-end accuracy and reliability. For this purpose, it carries an advanced radar altimeter and a multi-channel optical imaging instrument.
To achieve near-global coverage Sentinel-3 will be placed in a high-inclination, sun-synchronous polar orbit. ESA says it will offer near-real time data processing and delivery from the satellite.
