Sentinel-2A launched by the ESA !!!

Rendering of the Sentinel-2 satellite
June 24, 2015

The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched the Sentinel-2A satellite yesterday.  The satellite payload features 13 spectral bands in the visible, NIR, and SWIR wavelengths with 10m, 20m, and 60m spatial resolution and a 290 km swath width.  Specific band information is available at this ESA page.  In 2016 Sentinel-2B will be launched, providing a revisit time of 5 days.

Once the satellite completes check-out and calibration the data will be freely available.  Level 1C products will be Top of Atmosphere Reflectance and Level 2 products will be Surface Reflectance.  The USGS has an agreement to distribute these data for the ESA in North America.  Data will be available at the original spatial resolution and also resampled to 30m to make it easier to work with these data and the 40 years of imagery in the Landsat archive.

Sentinel-2 is part of the ambitious 6-family, 20-satellite, Copernicus program.  Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 to provide all-weather global radar coverage.  Later this year ESA is planning to launch Sentinel-1B and Sentinel-3.  You can learn more about this program at the Copernicus site.