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BERLIN—The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded Thales Alenia Space a contract to develop and build the Copernicus Sentinel-1 Next Generation Earth-observation satellite.
The signature at the ILA Berlin air show unlocks the first elements of a €700 million ($810 million) contract to build two satellites. Airbus will serve as the supplier of the main C-band synthetic aperture radar instruments.
The satellites’ principal role is maritime monitoring. As part of that mission, the spacecraft will host automatic identification system payloads to monitor the location of vessels.
Thales Alenia Space is the incumbent on the program and said it would employ its multi-mission platform used for other Copernicus missions. The new satellites will feature 13.6 m x 0.94 m (44.6 ft. x 3 ft.) phased arrays and new signal acquisition techniques to improve resolution by a factor of four over the first-generation system, with ESA saying it would yield a 5 m x 5 m resolution compared to 5 m x 20 m today.
“While current Sentinel-1 satellites continue to serve users in orbit, we are excited to see the next-generation mission take shape,” said Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s director of Earth observation programs.
ESA added that coverage will also be extended to the polar regions to expand environmental monitoring to an area particularly sensitive to environmental change.
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