The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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Replay of the Sentinel-1B launch coverage from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The second satellite in the Sentinel-1 mission lifted off on a Soyuz rocket on 25 April 2016 at 21:02 GMT (23:02 CEST) to provide ‘radar vision’ of Earth for Europe’s environmental Copernicus monitoring programme.
As well as liftoff and acquisition of the signal indicating that Sentinel-1B has been delivered into orbit safely, the coverage also includes talks by experts highlighting the goals and benefits of this second Sentinel-1 satellite. Sentinel-1B joins its identical twin, Sentinel-1A, in orbit to deliver information for numerous services, from monitoring ice in polar seas to tracking land subsidence, and for responding to disasters such as floods.
The launch of Sentinel-1B also provided an opportunity to give other smaller satellites a ride into space: three CubeSats developed by university students through ESA’s ‘Fly Your Satellite!’ programme and Microscope from the French space agency, CNES.