Sentinel-6B solar panel deployment

Following its arrival in California some weeks ago, satellite engineers are busy readying the next sea-level monitoring satellite, Copernicus Sentinel-6B, for launch, which is slated for November. The photograph shows engineers testing the deployment of the satellite’s solar panels.

Sentinel-6B is set to carry forward the legacy of Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich – the first Sentinel-6 satellite, launched in November 2020. The Sentinel-6 mission serves as the world’s primary reference mission for radar altimetry to extend the continuous record of sea-surface height measurements that began in the early 1990s by the French–US Topex Poseidon satellite and then by the Jason series of satellite missions.