Sentinel-2B in vacuum chamber

Sentinel-2B being prepared for testing in the Large Space Simulator at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands. The 15 m-diameter simulator mimics the cold and heat of space. The satellite was shipped from Airbus Defence and Space’s Friedrichshafen facility in Germany to ESA’s test centre in June 2016. Here, it is being put through a stringent environmental test campaign to make sure it is ready for its life in space. In 2017, Sentinel-2B will join its identical twin, Sentinel-2A, in orbit around Earth to provide multispectral imagery for a multitude of applications, from monitoring the health of the world’s vegetation to mapping regions struck by natural disaster.