While Great Leader Trump and his minions pursue their unholy crusade against science and knowledge, others are still paying attention to the real world.
The European Space Agency just launched Sentinel 2b
Sentinel-2B carries a large camera to image all land surfaces and coastal waters in visible and infrared light.
It joins an identical spacecraft, Sentinel-2A, already in orbit.
The duo will be flown on the same path but 180 degrees apart so that they can provide a complete map of Earth - clouds permitting - every five days.
The Sentinels constitute the space segment of the European Union's Copernicus environmental monitoring programme.
A suite of sensors is being lofted over the next few years to gather critical information on the state of the planet and to acquire the data needed to inform and enforce EU policies.
The European Union is serious about this — they’re setting up to gather a wide range of data about the planet — and it will be available to researchers and the public.
Sentinels are designed to fly in pairs to shorten the revisit time to any one point on Earth.
Sentinel 1 is a radar platform and has had its duo fully operational in orbit since last year. Sentinel 2 is the next to complete its pairing; Sentinel 3, which carries predominantly ocean sensors, should have an orbiting pair aloft come next year.
Sentinels 4 and 5, which study the atmosphere, and Sentinel 6, to measure ocean height, have no presence in orbit yet.
But even though the programme is still to complete its initial roll-out, the EU and Esa have already begun to discuss how to extend it.
In this future-scoping, Sentinel 7 is envisaged to be a constellation of satellites that monitors carbon dioxide; Sentinel 8 could be a thermal infrared sensor, useful for understanding phenomena such as drought; and Sentinel 9 might be a polar mission, either to study the extent and thickness of ice surfaces or to provide better weather imaging and communications at high latitudes.
Is it a surprise Trump and his minions want to see the European Union break up? Programs like this are only going to widen the gap as the U.S. falls behind the rest of the world in its race to become an impoverished third world style kleptocracy, albeit one with nuclear weapons and paranoia.
Trump probably isn’t even aware Europe has a space program. By cutting NASA off at the knees, we’re losing the opportunity to contribute to an effort to really understand what is happening to our homeworld. This is willful ignorance on steroids.
If you want to find out more about the ESA earth monitoring program, take a look at the Copernicus website:
Copernicus has been specifically designed to meet user requirements. Through satellite and in-situ observations, the services deliver near-real-time data on a global level which can also be used for local and regional needs, to help us better understand our planet and sustainably manage the environment we live in. Download the brochure...
Copernicus is served by a set of dedicated satellites (the Sentinel families) and contributing missions (existing commercial and public satellites). The Sentinel satellites are specifically designed to meet the needs of the Copernicus services and their users. Since the launch of Sentinel-1A in 2014, the European Union set in motion a process to place a constellation of almost 20 more satellites in orbit before 2030.
Copernicus also collects information from In-situ systems such as ground stations, which deliver data acquired by a multitude of sensors on the ground, at sea or in the air.
The Copernicus Services transform this wealth of satellite and insitu data into value-added information by processing and analysing the data. Datasets stretching back for years and decades are made comparable and searchable, thus ensuring the monitoring of changes; patterns are examined and used to create better forecasts, for example, of the ocean and the atmosphere. Maps are created from imagery, features and anomalies are identified and statistical information is extracted.
Years ago, the United States handed primacy to Europe in the field of particle physics when the Superconducting Supercollider program was canceled and CERN took the lead. (Thanks Bill Clinton!) It looks like the U.S. is about to do the same with the space program — there’s only so many vanity projects billionaires will spend their money on after all, and apparently none of them care what’s happening to the planet as long as they can keep making money trashing it. So far as Making America Great Again goes, it all seems to be about an arms build-up — but nothing for brains.
If you haven’t signed up yet, the March For Science needs you!
Here’s a fitting video — Wishing On A Satellite by Dean Friedman. (Lyrics here.)