Less than a week after its launch, the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite has delivered its first radar images of Earth, showcasing its capabilities for environmental monitoring. The initial images feature regions of interest, including Svalbard in Norway, the Netherlands, and Brussels, Belgium.
Launched on December 5 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana aboard a Vega-C rocket, Sentinel-1C is equipped with a state-of-the-art C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument. This advanced technology allows the satellite to provide high-resolution imagery day and night, in all weather conditions, supporting critical applications such as environmental management, disaster response, and climate change research.
Now, the new satellite has delivered its initial set of radar images over Europe, flawlessly processed by the Sentinel-1 Ground Segment. These images demonstrate an exceptional level of data quality for initial imagery, reflecting the outstanding efforts of the entire Sentinel-1 team over the past years.
The first image, captured just 56 hours and 23 minutes after liftoff, features Svalbard, a remote Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Another image showcases part of the Netherlands, including Amsterdam and the region of Flevoland, which is renowned for its extensive farmland and advanced water management systems.
Sentinel-1C's advanced radar captures intricate details of this region, providing invaluable data for monitoring soil moisture and assessing crop health. These insights are essential for enhancing agricultural productivity and ensuring sustainable resource management in one of Europe's key farming areas. This image of the Netherlands echoes the very first SAR image acquired by the legacy European Remote-Sensing (ERS) mission in 1991, which captured the Flevoland polder and the Ijsselmeer, marking the first European radar image ever taken from space.