Saturday, November 14, 2020

Copernicus Sentinel-6 measuring sea levels using radar altimetry

 
This November the newest member of the EU’s Copernicus programme, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, will take to the heavens from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The satellite is named after NASA’s former Director of Earth Observation and is a radar altimetry mission to monitor sea-level rise, wave-height and windspeed.
The mission is a collaboration between ESA, the European Commission, EUMETSAT, NASA and NOAA, with support from the French space agency CNES.
It will continue a three-decade-long time-series of radar altimetry missions that started with the Topex-Poseidon mission and was then followed by the Jason missions.
 
With global mean sea level rising because of climate change, Copernicus Sentinel-6 is the next radar altimetry reference mission to extend the legacy of sea-surface height measurements until at least 2030. 
Launch : 21 November 2020

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