On April 22, the European Space Agency ESA will launch the Sentinel-1B satellite on top of a Soyuz rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.

It is the twin brother of Sentinel-1A launched in 2014 and the fourth satellite of the Copernicus Sentinel series.

With Sentinel-1, ESA and the European Union can already showcase the importance and interest of the Space component of the Copernicus programme.

The Sentinel-1 satellites offer numerous services covering applications in the marine environment with oil-spill monitoring or ship detection for maritime security, monitoring land-subsidence, and mapping of forests, water and soils as well as supporting humanitarian aid and crisis situations management.

This video shows a good example of Sentinel services for monitoring Arctic sea-ice and iceberg mapping with the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen.