The Sentinel-3 Mission: Overview and status

The series of Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Sentinel satellites will continue and extend the European heritage of ENVISAT to provide data to numerous user communities. Sentinel-3 is being developed to support GMES Ocean and global Land monitoring services. Two Sentinel-3 satellites are in development with a first launch in 2014 and the second satellite expected approximately 18 months after the first. This paper provides an overview of the Sentinel-3 Mission.