Sentinel 2A: the Image Quality performances at the beginning of the mission

摘要

Launched on June 23rd, 2015 from Kourou, Sentinel 2A has been providing images for more than 1 year now. The satellite behavior is very satisfactory and the quality of data fulfills the requirements with comfortable margins. The realization and implementation of the satellite has been realized under the responsibility of ESA, for the European Commission. The In Orbit Commissioning phase lasted 4 months, concluded by a review on October 16th, 2015. At this date, the S2A space segment handover took place from the Project Manager (ESA/ESTEC) to the Mission Manager (ESA/ESRIN). The subset of Image Quality commissioning was delegated by ESA to CNES, referring to the experience of the French Space Agency on previous imagers. This phase lasted 7 months after the launch, extending beyond the IOCR. Actually, some parameters required several months before converging to a stable state. This paper presents the status of the satellite, from an IQ prospective, just before it entered its operational phase. The radiometric and geometric performances are listed, including: the absolute radiometric calibration, the equalization, the SNR, the absolute and the multi-temporal location accuracy. The accomplishment of a part of the Global Reference Image over Europe is evoked as well. The IQ commissioning phase ended on January 28th, 2016. From this date, the monitoring of IQ parameters is under the responsibility of ESA/ESRIN. Nevertheless, CNES continues to support ESA to survey the accuracy of S2A performances. The article ends by dealing with the future of S2A that will work together with S2B by the end of 2016.