Around five years ago, in April 2014, the first satellite of the European earth observation Copernicus programme was launched, Sentinel-1A. Meanwhile, seven Sentinel satellites are in operation. EOC processes and archives the data recorded by four of them, now amounting to over 10 petabytes.
DLR's Earth Observation Center has undertaken on behalf of ESA the function of a Sentinel-1 / Sentinel-3 OLCI Processing and Archiving Center (PAC). At the PAC value-added image data is generated from the raw data of four Sentinel satellites. These are archived in the German Satellite Data Archive at EOC and made available to users worldwide for data analysis.
In January 2019 the total quantity of archived data exceeded for the first time the value of 10 petabytes (ten million gigabytes). Over seven million Sentinel data sets have been processed and archived at the PAC since operations began in January 2015. They include over five million data sets from the radar satellite duo Sentinel-1A/-1B and just under two million data sets from the OLCI sensors on Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B.
Looking at data volumes alone, most come from the two radar satellites (94%), with the OLCI data in the optical wavelength range contributing just six percent.
By the end of 2019 the amount of archived data is expected to grow by an additional 2.5 petabytes.
The Sentinel data is accessible free of charge for all interested users via the German access point CODE-DE or ESA's Copernicus Open Access Hub. After successful conclusion of the Sentinel-3B Commissioning Phase, ESA made Level-1 OLCI data from Sentinel-3B available to users starting 17 December 2018, and on 24 January 2019 the Level-2 OLCI products followed.
