ESA plans to track the health of the world’s vegetation by detecting and measuring the faint glow that plants give off as they convert sunlight and the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide into energy. Yielding information about the health and stress of the planet’s vegetation is important as the growing global population places increasing demands on the production of food and animal feed. Following a rigorous selection process, the satellite will be ESA’s eighth Earth Explorer, planned for launch by 2022.

The latest satellite for the European Commission’s Copernicus environmental programme has left France bound for the Plesetsk launch site in Russia and launch late next month. Sentinel-3A is scheduled for liftoff on a Rockot launcher at the end of December. Carrying a suite of state-of-the-art instruments, Sentinel-3A is set to provide an unprecedented step forward in the Copernicus marine, land, atmosphere and climate change services. Sentinel-3A wrapped up The satellite began its two-day journey from Thales Alenia Space in Cannes to Nice airport by lorry during the night.

The European Space Agency (ESA), on behalf of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), is pleased to announce the release of the updated CEOS Missions, Instruments, and Measurements (MIM) database. This release is based on inputs from CEOS agencies in response to the extensive 2015 survey process. The MIM database is available at http://database.eohandbook.com, and the web version of the handbook is available at http://www.eohandbook.com.

Access to first pre-qualified S2 data is available from https://scihub.esa.int

Just search for S2A* and you will find the first S2 data over North Italy between the many already existing Sentinel-1 data.

Please note that the data are pre-qualified, current limitations include: