Sentinel-2 is an

Earth observation Earth observation (EO) is the gathering of information about the physical, chemical, and biosphere, biological systems of the planet Earth. It can be performed via remote sensing, remote-sensing technologies (Earth observation satellites) or throu ...

mission from the

Copernicus Programme Copernicus is the Earth observation component of the European Union Space Programme, managed by the European Commission and implemented in partnership with the Member state of the European Union, EU member states, the European Space Agency (ES ...

that acquires optical imagery at high

spatial resolution In physics and geosciences, the term spatial resolution refers to distance between independent measurements, or the physical dimension that represents a pixel of the image. While in some instruments, like cameras and telescopes, spatial resoluti ...

(10 m to 60 m) over land and coastal waters. The mission's

Sentinel-2A Sentinel-2A is a European optical imaging satellite launched in 2015. It is the first Sentinel-2 satellite launched as part of the European Space Agency's Copernicus Programme. The satellite carries a wide swath high-resolution multispectral imag ...

and

Sentinel-2B Sentinel-2B is a European optical imaging satellite that was launched on 7 March 2017. It is the second Sentinel-2 satellite launched as part of the European Space Agency's Copernicus Programme, and with its orbit phased 180° against its siste ...

satellites were joined in orbit in 2024 by a third, Sentinel-2C, and in the future by Sentinel-2D, eventually replacing the A and B satellites, respectively. The mission supports services and applications such as agricultural monitoring, emergencies management, land cover classification, and water quality. Sentinel-2 has been developed and is being operated by the

European Space Agency The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

. The satellites were manufactured by a consortium led by

Airbus Defence and Space Airbus Defence and Space is a division of Airbus SE. Formed in 2014 in the restructuring of European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS), Airbus SE comprises the former Airbus Military, Astrium, and divisions. Contributing 21% of Airbus reven ...

Friedrichshafen Friedrichshafen ( or ; Low Alemannic: ''Hafe'' or ''Fridrichshafe'') is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the ''Bodensee'') in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. It is the district capital (''K ...

, Germany.

Overview

The Sentinel-2 mission includes: * Multi-spectral data with 13 bands in the visible,

near infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those o ...

, and short wave infrared part of the

spectrum A spectrum (: spectra or spectrums) is a set of related ideas, objects, or properties whose features overlap such that they blend to form a continuum. The word ''spectrum'' was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of co ...

* Systematic global coverage of land surfaces from 56° S to 84° N, coastal waters, and all of the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

* Revisiting every 10 days under the same viewing angles. At high latitudes, Sentinel-2 swath overlap and some regions will be observed twice or more every 10 days, but with different viewing angles. * Spatial resolution of 10 m, 20 m and 60 m * 290 km field of view * Free and open data policy To achieve frequent revisits and high mission availability, two identical Sentinel-2 satellites (Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B) operate together. The satellites are phased 180 degrees from each other on the same orbit. This allows for what would be a 10-day revisit cycle to be completed in 5 days. The 290 km swath is created by the VNIR and SWIR, which are each made of 12 detectors that are lined in two offset rows. The orbits are

Sun-synchronous A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is ...

at altitude, 14.3 revolutions per day, with a 10:30 a.m. descending node. This local time was selected as a compromise between minimizing cloud cover and ensuring suitable Sun illumination. It is close to the

Landsat The Landsat program is the longest-running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. It is a joint NASA / USGS program. On 23 July 1972, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched. This was eventually renamed to Lan ...

local time and matches

SPOT Spot or SPOT may refer to: Places * Spot, North Carolina, a community in the United States * The Spot, New South Wales, a locality in Sydney, Australia * South Pole Traverse, sometimes called the South Pole Overland Traverse People * Spot Coll ...

, allowing the combination of Sentinel-2 data with historical images to build long-term time series. File:Orbit path - Sentinel 2A descending - day.png, Sentinel 2A's descending orbital path File:Orbit path - Sentinel 2B descending - day.png, Sentinel 2B's descending orbital path

Launches

The launch of the first satellite,

, occurred 23 June 2015 at 01:52 UTC on a

Vega Vega is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Lyra. It has the Bayer designation α Lyrae, which is Latinised to Alpha Lyrae and abbreviated Alpha Lyr or α Lyr. This star is relatively close at only from the Sun, and ...

launch vehicle.

was launched on 7 March 2017 at 01:49 UTC, also aboard a Vega rocket. Sentinel-2C was launched on 5 September 2024 on the last

launch vehicle.

Instrument

The Sentinel-2 satellites each carry a single instrument, the Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI), which has 13 spectral channels in the visible/near infrared (VNIR) and short wave infrared spectral range (SWIR). Within the 13 bands, the spatial resolution allows for continued collaboration with the SPOT-5 and Landsat-8 missions, with the core focus being land classification. Designed and built by Airbus Defense and Space in France, the MSI uses a push-broom concept and its design was driven by the large swath requirements together with the high geometrical and spectral performance required of the measurements. It has a aperture and a three-mirror anastigmat design with a focal length of about ; the instantaneous field of view is about 21° by 3.5°. The mirrors are rectangular and made of

silicon carbide Silicon carbide (SiC), also known as carborundum (), is a hard chemical compound containing silicon and carbon. A wide bandgap semiconductor, it occurs in nature as the extremely rare mineral moissanite, but has been mass-produced as a powder a ...

, a similar technology to those on the ''

Gaia In Greek mythology, Gaia (; , a poetic form of ('), meaning 'land' or 'earth'),, , . also spelled Gaea (), is the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (S ...

astrometry Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other Astronomical object, celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, th ...

mission. The MSI system also employs a shutter mechanism preventing direct illumination of the instrument by the sun. This mechanism is also used in the calibration of the instrument. Out of the existing civic optical earth observation missions, Sentinel-2 is the first acquiring three bands in the

red edge Red edge refers to the region of rapid change in reflectance of vegetation in the near infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Chlorophyll contained in vegetation absorbs most of the light in the visible part of the spectrum but becomes a ...

. MSI has

12-bit Before the widespread adoption of ASCII in the late 1960s, six-bit character codes were common and a 12-bit word, which could hold two characters, was a convenient size. This also made it useful for storing a single decimal digit along with a si ...

radiometric resolution ( bit depth) with brightness intensity ranging from 0–4095.

Spectral bands

Temporal offsets

Due to the layout of the focal plane, spectral bands within the MSI observe the surface at different times and vary between band pairs. These temporal offsets can be used to gain additional information, for example to track propagating natural and human-made features such as clouds, airplanes or ocean waves

Applications

South Georgia Island as seen by Sentinel-2

Sentinel-2 serves a wide range of applications related to Earth's land and coastal water. The mission provides information for agricultural and forestry practices and for helping manage

food security Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, healthy Human food, food. The availability of food for people of any class, gender, ethnicity, or religion is another element of food protection. Simila ...

. Satellite images will be used to determine various plant indices such as leaf area chlorophyll and water content indexes. This is particularly important for effective yield prediction and applications related to Earth's vegetation. As well as monitoring plant growth, Sentinel-2 is used to map changes in land cover and to monitor the world's forests. It also provides information on pollution in lakes and coastal waters. Images of floods, volcanic eruptions and landslides contribute to disaster mapping and help humanitarian relief efforts. Examples of applications include: * Monitoring land cover change for environmental monitoring * Agricultural applications, such as crop monitoring and management to help food security *Identification of buried archaeological sites * Mapping of palaeo-channels through multitemporal analysis * Detailed vegetation and forest monitoring and parameter generation (e.g. leaf area index, chlorophyll concentration, carbon mass estimations) * Observation of coastal zones (marine environmental monitoring, coastal zone mapping) * Inland water monitoring (Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) monitoring and assessment ) * Glacier monitoring, ice extent mapping, snow cover monitoring * Flood mapping & management (risk analysis, loss assessment, disaster management during floods) * Lava flow mapping The Sentinel Monitoring web application offers an easy way to observe and analyse land changes based on archived Sentinel-2 data.

Products

The following two main products are generated by the mission: * Level-1C: Top-of-atmosphere reflectances in cartographic geometry (combined UTM projection and WGS84 ellipsoid). Level-1C products are tiles of 100 km x 100 km each one with a volume of approximately 500 MB. These products are radiometrically and geometrically corrected (including orthorectification). This product can be obtained from the
Copernicus Data Space EcosystemRead instructions
* Level-2A: Surface reflectances in cartographic geometry. This product is considered as the mission Analysis Ready Data (ARD), the product that can be used directly in downstream applications without the need for further processing. This product can be obtained either from th
Copernicus Data Space EcosystemRead instructions
, or generated by the user with th
Sen2Cor
processor from ESA'
SNAP Toolbox
Additionally, the following product for expert users is also available: *Level-1B: Top of atmosphere radiances in sensor geometry. Level-1B is composed of granules, one granule represents the sub-image one of the 12 detectors in the across track direction (25 km), and contains a given number of lines along track (approximately 23 km). Each Level-1B granule has a data volume of approximately 27 MB. Given the complexity of Level-1B products, their usage require an advanced expertise.

Gallery

File:Sentinel-2A satellite - CSG - Carefully aligning the satellite to the adapter.jpg, Aligning

to its adapter before launch File:Sentinel-2A satellite - Half-shells close.jpg, Encapsulating

in the

rocket fairing File:Lake MacKay Australia.jpg,

Lake Mackay Lake Mackay, known as Wilkinkarra to the Indigenous Pintupi people, is the largest of hundreds of ephemeral salt lakes scattered throughout the Pilbara and northern parts of the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia and the Northe ...

, Australia by Copernicus Sentinel-2B File:Central District Botswana ESA373976.jpg, Central District,

Botswana Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory part of the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the sou ...

by Copernicus Sentinel-2A File:Vojvodina, Serbia ESA375680.jpg,

Vojvodina Vojvodina ( ; sr-Cyrl, Војводина, ), officially the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, is an Autonomous administrative division, autonomous province that occupies the northernmost part of Serbia, located in Central Europe. It lies withi ...

Serbia , image_flag = Flag of Serbia.svg , national_motto = , image_coat = Coat of arms of Serbia.svg , national_anthem = () , image_map = , map_caption = Location of Serbia (gree ...

by Copernicus Sentinel-2A File:Central-eastern Brazil, by Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite.jpg, Central-eastern

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

, by Copernicus Sentinel-2A File:Lake Balaton Hungary(1).jpg,

Lake Balaton Lake Balaton () is a freshwater rift lake in the Transdanubian region of Hungary. It is the List of largest lakes of Europe, largest lake in Central Europe, and one of the region's foremost tourist destinations. The Zala River provides the larges ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

File:PV power plants cluster Bhadla (India) develpment 2016 2018 2020.png, Timeline of the

Bhadla Solar Park The Bhadla Solar Park is a solar power plant located in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, India. It covers an area of 56 square kilometers and has a total installed capacity of 2,245 megawatts (MW), making it India's largest and the 11th-largest s ...

(India) development, the world's largest photovoltaic power plants cluster in 2020 File:Sentinel-2 L1C image on 2020-08-09.jpg, The

Port of Beirut The Port of Beirut () is the main port in Lebanon on the eastern part of the Saint George Bay on Beirut's northern Mediterranean coast, west of the Beirut River. It is one of the largest and busiest ports on the Eastern Mediterranean. On 4 Augu ...

as seen from Sentinel-2 after the August 4, 2020 explosion that decimated much of

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

File:La Palma lava flows into the sea (51564701938).jpg, Sentinel-2 photograph of the area covered by the

2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption An eruption at the Cumbre Vieja complex volcano, volcanic ridge, comprising the southern half of the Spain, Spanish island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, took place between 19 September and 13 December 2021. It was the first volcanic eruption ...

flow on Monday afternoon 20 September 2021 File:Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai on Sentinel-2 L2A 20 December 2021 (cropped).jpg, Sentinel-2 image of

Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai () is a submarine volcano in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific located about south of the submarine volcano of Fonuafo'ou, Fonuafoou and north of Tongatapu, Tonga's main island. It is part of the highly active Kerma ...

island on 20 December 2021 (the only major subaerial part of the volcano) formed a single island from 2015 to

2022 The year began with another wave in the COVID-19 pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, Omicron spreading rapidly and becoming the dominant variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. Tracking a decrease in cases and deaths, 2022 saw ...

File:LakeStClair sentinel2 (cropped).jpg, An image of

Lake St. Clair Lake St. Clair () is a freshwater lake that lies between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Michigan. It was named in 1679 by French Catholic explorers after Saint Clare of Assisi, on whose feast day they first saw the lake. ...

from April 19, 2023

References

External links

Sentinel-2
at ESA
Copernicus
at ESA
Sentinel-2 data sheetSentinel-2 Mission Requirements Document
{{European Space Agency Copernicus Programme Earth observation satellites of the European Space Agency Twin satellites