The Sentinel-3 satellites carry a suite of cutting-edge instruments designed to systematically monitor Earth’s oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere. By observing these components of the Earth system, the mission provides essential information for monitoring and understanding large-scale environmental processes and dynamics. Its near-realtime data also support ocean and weather forecasting.

The mission comprises two identical satellites operating in constellation to provide optimum global coverage and timely data delivery. For example, with a swath width of 1270 km, the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument can achieve global coverage approximately every two days.

Sentinel-3 mission data play a key role in monitoring changes across the planet and improving our understanding of Earth-system dynamics. The mission provides essential information to the Copernicus Services and supports a wide range of applications, including ocean monitoring, weather forecasting, climate studies and the assessment of environmental change.