Sentinel-3 reveals all

Building a satellite is a complex business and the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission is certainly no exception. The detailed engineering drawings have been translated into a faithful animation of Sentinel-3 revealing its instrumentation. The animation reveals the beauty of this new satellite and offers a glimpse inside, including the ocean and land colour instrument, the sea and land surface temperature radiometer, the synthetic aperture radar radiometer and the microwave radiometer. This suite of state-of-the-art instruments will provide systematic measurements of Earth’s oceans, land, ice and atmosphere to monitor and understand large-scale global dynamics and provide critical information for ocean and weather forecasting. The Sentinel-3 instruments build on heritage from ESA’s Envisat and CryoSat satellites. The satellite was designed and built by a consortium of around 100 companies under the leadership of Thales Alenia Space.