ESA has recently announced that its satellite Sentinel-3A is now fully formed, after 18 months of careful assembling.
The satellite is expected to be launched at the end of 2015. It will join in orbit Sentinel-1A, launched on April 2014, and Sentinel-2A, to be launched in spring 2015.
Sentinel-3A will play a key role in the world's largest environmental monitoring initiative, the Copernicus programme. It will measure different aspects of ocean waters, such as changes in the temperature and height of the sea surface.
In order to monitor Earth's oceans and land, the satellite has been equipped with a radar altimeter, an infrared radiometer and a wide-swath ocean and land imaging spectrometer.
The information that will be collected by the satellite will be used for multiple purposes, including ocean forecasting, maritime safety and for prediction of extreme events in coastal areas, such as storm surges and floods.
