Sentinel is a series of seven missions developed in the framework of ESA’s Copernicus Earth observation programme. Copernicus is the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme, providing accurate, timely and easily accessible information to improve the management of the environment, understand and mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security. Each Sentinel mission is based on a constellation of two satellites to fulfil revisit and coverage requirements, monitoring different aspects of land, ocean and atmosphere by applying a range of technologies, such as radar and multi-spectral imaging instruments. To date the first satellite of Sentinel 1 mission has been launched on 3rd April 2014, which provides radar observations in Interferometric Wide swath mode (250 km swath and 5 x 20 m resolution), Wave mode (20 x 20 km data at two different incidence angles every 100 km), and potentially Stripmap (80 km swath and 5 x 5 m resolution) and Extra Wide Swath (20 x 40 m resolution) modes.

Mission	Sentinel-1
Sensor	Microwave radar
Spacecraft	Sentinel-1
Operational modes	Strip Map Mode; Interferometric Wide Swath Mode; Extra-wide Swath Mode; Wave Mode.
Design life	Min. 7 years
Orbit	Near polar sun synchronous 693km; 12-day repeat cycle; 175 revs per cycle.
Polarisation	VV/HH for Wave Mode; VV+VH or HH+HV for other modes