<p>The EU Copernicus programme, with seven Sentinel satellites in orbit and further missions planned, delivers terabytes of accurate climate and environmental data every day, and can therefore arguably considered the biggest provider of Earth Observation data world-wide.</p><p>Copernicus Sentinel data and information are made available globally, in a full, free and open policy, through data hubs managed by ESA. Also, since mid-2018, the DIAS (Data and Information Access Service) initiative has allowed several commercial consortia to set up platforms which provide access to Copernicus data far easier in order to boost the creation of new business models based on Earth Observation.</p><p>Copernicus data is already used by thousands of entities world-wide to help farmers decide when to plant or harvest, to mitigate the erosion of our coasts, to fight deforestation, to detect and monitor oil spills, forest fires, harmful algae, measure wave heights, wind speeds and sea ice, among many other applications.</p><p>ESA, as coordinator and system architect of the Copernicus Space Component, ensures that the current space infrastructure properly evolves to support data continuity and to respond to newly identified user needs.</p><p>In this framework four future observational capability families have been identified, supported by a detailed observation gap analysis:</p><ul><li>Microwave Imaging Family: new missions called CIMR (Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer) to monitor sea surface temperature/salinity and important sea ice parameters in the polar regions, and ROSE-L (L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar) to support land applications (e.g. forest management, crop type discrimination, soil moisture) and polar regions monitoring, are envisaged to be launched in the next decade. Also, continuity with the current Sentinel-1 applications will be guaranteed through the Sentinel-1 Next Generation C-band SAR mission.</li>
<li>Optical Imaging family: two new missions are in the making, the LSTM (Copernicus Land Surface Temperature Monitoring) to provide high-resolution thermal observations of land-surface temperature, mainly for agricultural applications, and CHIME (Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission), which will support new and enhanced services for sustainable agricultural and biodiversity management through the provision of routine hyperspectral observations. For data continuity, the Sentinel-2/-3 Next Generation optical missions will provide medium and high-resolution imaging.</li>
<li>Topographic Measurement Family: a new mission called CRISTAL (Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimeter) will measure and monitor, among others, sea-ice thickness and overlying snow depth. The Next Generation topographic mission on future Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-6 will complement these observations.</li>
<li>Spectroscopic Atmosphere Measurement Family: a satellite constellation of CO2M (Copernicus Anthropogenic CO<sub>2</sub> monitoring) will measure atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by human activity to assess the effectiveness of EU policy measures.</li>
</ul><p>&#160;</p><p>The Copernicus programme, with some satellites in orbit and many others to arrive in the future, and with thematic services which transform this wealth of data into value-added information available to all citizens, will help us check the health of our planet Earth for the decades to come.</p><p>This presentation will therefore give an overview of the current status and future perspectives of the Copernicus space infrastructure.</p>
Wave front sensing for next generation earth observation telescope