October 10, 2018

Sentinel-3B operational at EOC

On 1 October the Processing and Archiving Center (PAC) at EOC began routine operations for handling data from ESA's Sentinel-3B satellite. This date marks the full implementation of the PAC commissioned by ESA. At the PAC, value-added image data are generated from the raw data acquired by four Sentinel satellites, safeguarded at the German Satellite Data Archive (D-SDA) at EOC, and made available to users worldwide for data analysis.

Computer rendering: Sentinel-3 in space
Credit:

ESA/ATG medialab

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Five months after the launch of the Sentinel-3B satellite on 25 April 2018 data from the OLCI sensor on board will be operationally processed and archived at DFD. For the first Copernicus satellite to be launched, Sentinel-1A, the PAC has been in routine operation for more than three and one-half years. This milestone was achieved already in July 2016 for the two Sentinel-1B and Sentinel-3A satellites. Now with Sentinel-3B, the third Copernicus mission is operating reliably in twin constellation.

Atmosphere data from Sentinel-5P— the seventh successfully launched Copernicus satellite— have been freely available to all users since July 2018. The DLR Earth Observation Center (EOC) was and is responsible for establishing and operating the payload ground segment for this ESA mission.

Every day, more than 1600 products are processed from the Sentinel-3A und Sentinel-3B OLCI sensor data, and almost 600 GB of data are safeguarded in the long-term archive. At 4700 data products per day, the two Sentinel-1 satellites produce a significantly greater volume of data. Over 6600 GB (6.5 terabytes) from this pair of satellites are processed and archived daily.

Over 5.4 million Sentinel data sets have been processed and archived by the PAC at EOC. The amount of data processed to date amounts to over 9250 terabytes (9 petabytes). The 10 petabyte milestone will probably be reached in the first quarter of 2019. In comparison, the 800 TB of data that were archived at DFD over the 26-year service life (1991-2017) of the ERS- and Envisat-PAF-PAC project look rather modest.

The Sentinel data are freely available for all users via ESA's Copernicus Open Access Hub. Within the next few weeks ESA will also permit access to the Sentinel-3B data.



 

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