{"id":13927,"date":"2014-04-17T04:16:45","date_gmt":"2014-04-17T04:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/eu-s-first-sentinel-satellite-images-earth\/"},"modified":"2014-04-17T04:16:34","modified_gmt":"2014-04-17T04:16:34","slug":"eu-s-first-sentinel-satellite-images-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/eu-s-first-sentinel-satellite-images-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"EU’s first Sentinel satellite images Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

{Sentinel-1a radar satellite } <\/p>\n

{{The European Union’s new Sentinel-1a radar satellite has returned its first images of Earth.}}<\/p>\n

Launched on 3 April, the spacecraft is part of a fleet of orbiting sensors that will go up over the next few years to monitor the state of the planet.<\/p>\n

Its maiden pictures depict Brussels, flooding in Namibia and one of the mightiest ice features on Earth – Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica.<\/p>\n

The images give a flavour of the sort of work Sentinel-1a will be doing.<\/p>\n

Radar data is particularly useful for urban planning purposes, for making maps following natural disasters, and for monitoring remote locations such as polar ice fields.<\/p>\n

The sample of images released by the European Space Agency (Esa) is just a taster. The satellite’s imager will require further calibration before full operational service can begin in about three months’ time.<\/p>\n

“It’s going fine; the satellite is performing really well – as you can tell from the new images,” confirmed Ian Shurmer, who leads the team that is operating the Sentinel from Esa’s “mission control” in Darmstadt, Germany.<\/p>\n

“We took the very first image just three days after launch, but that was just a functional test. We’re now operating the Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on a daily basis, with the input of [the mission planners].”<\/p>\n

One task requiring attention is a refinement of the Sentinel’s near-700km-high orbit.<\/p>\n

It is a few kilometres lower than perfect in its semi-major axis, but Shurmer’s team can easily fix this with a sequence of firings on the spacecraft’s thrusters.<\/p>\n

And in what is a sign of the times, the engineers have already had to manoeuvre Sentinel-1a to avoid the possibility of a collision with a defunct American satellite.<\/p>\n

Space debris is a growing problem, and Esa’s operations teams have to be alert to other objects moving through their orbits.<\/p>\n

“Maybe once or twice a year, you have to give yourself a little nudge to get out of the way of something,” explained Shurmer. “We just pushed Sentinel-1a down by about 50m to make sure nothing happened.”<\/p>\n

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{Sentinel-1a radar satellite } {{The European Union’s new Sentinel-1a radar satellite has returned its first images of Earth.}} Launched on 3 April, the spacecraft is part of a fleet of orbiting sensors that will go up over the next few years to monitor the state of the planet. Its maiden pictures depict Brussels, flooding in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000051698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-13927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000051698,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13927.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13927.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13927.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13927.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13927.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton13927.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000051698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13927"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=13927"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=13927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}