ESA calls for Sentinel-2 Mission Advisory Group members
Within the framework of the GMES initiative, ESA is developing a series of ‘Sentinel’ satellites. As part of this development process, the Agency has released a call for Mission Advisory Group members for the Sentinel-2 mission.
Applications can be made via the following website: http://missionadvice.esa.int. Please note that the deadline for submission is 26 April 2010 (12:00 CEST).
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) has been established to fulfil the growing need amongst European policy-makers to access accurate and timely information services to better manage the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security.
Under the leadership of the European Commission, GMES relies largely on data from satellites observing Earth. Hence, ESA – in accordance with the European Space Policy – is developing and managing the Space Component for the initiative.
To ensure the operational provision of Earth-observation data, the Space Component includes the series of five Sentinels missions being developed by ESA specifically for GMES.
The Sentinel-2 mission will fly as a pair of satellites, with the first planned to launch in 2013. Each Sentinel-2 satellite carries a Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI) with a swath of 290 km. It provides a versatile set of 13 spectral bands spanning from the visible and near infrared (VNIR) to the shortwave infrared (SWIR), featuring 4 spectral bands at 10m, 6 bands at 20m and 3 bands at 60m spatial resolution.
In full operational phase, the pair of Sentinel-2 satellites will deliver imagery on all land surfaces and coastal zones every five days under cloud-free conditions, and typically every 15-30 days considering the presence of clouds.
In general, the role of the Mission Advisory Group is to provide advice to ESA during development and implementation of the mission. For more information about the Mission Advisory Group application procedure please visit the website noted above and also linked from the right-hand bar.
