The first high-resolution images have been received from Copernicus Sentinel-1D and were shared publicly for the first time at the European Space Agency's Ministerial Council, held today in Bremen, Germany. Glaciers in Antarctica, the tip of South America, as well as the city of Bremen, are visible in these stunning radar images.
The groundbreaking Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission saw the arrival in orbit of its latest satellite earlier in November: Sentinel-1D was launched on 4 November, on board an Ariane 6 launcher from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
Once in orbit, the satellite and its instruments - it carries a 12 m-long synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument - were switched on, ready to capture images during a pass over the Antarctic and South America two days after launch. On the night of 6 November (European time), the first images were captured over the Antarctic Peninsula, the Tierra del Fuego and the Thwaites Glacier. Some six hours later, on the morning of 7 November, Sentinel-1D also captured images over Bremen, in Germany. The data was then transmitted, or 'downlinked', from the satellite to the ground station, in Matera (Italy), which is part of the Copernicus Ground Segment. All this was done within 50 hours of launch, which is likely to be the shortest time from launch to data delivery for a radar-based Earth observation satellite.