Some news from ESA regarding the coming launches of Sentinels 1 and 2

In this article, ESA gave us some news of the time table for the coming launches of next Sentinel1 and 2 satellites. As you may have heard, we have these days a shortage of European launchers, due to the ending of Soyouz launches from Kourou, the delays in Ariane 6 delivery, and the initial uncertainties of the availability of the Ukrainian engines for the VEGA-C rocket.

It is therefore a good news to know that the next Sentinel1 and Sentinel-2 launches have been booked. Here are the anticipated launch dates :

Sentinel-1C is the most wanted, since the breakdown of Sentinel-1B. Sentinel 2C will be launched almost 9 years after Sentinel-2A. It will replace it, and Sentinel-2A will be kept in orbit for some time, in case something happens to the operational satelllites. We could have dreamed of using the availability of three satellites to improve the revisit, but the costs of exploiting three satellites seems not to be fitting in the available funding. However, if several important users asked for it repeatedly, such as Copernicus services, maybe it could help convince the EU…