Sentinel-4
Sentinel-4 is a European Earth observation mission developed to support the European Union Copernicus Programme for monitoring the Earth. It focuses on monitoring of trace gas concentrations and aerosols in the atmosphere to support operational services covering air-quality near-real time applications, air-quality protocol monitoring and climate protocol monitoring. The specific objective of Sentinel-4 is to support this with a high revisit time over Europe.
| Manufacturer | Airbus Defence and Space | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Operator | Eumetsat | ||
| Applications | Earth observation | ||
| Specifications | |||
| Spacecraft type | Satellite | ||
| Bus | Meteosat Third Generation-S, Luxor bus | ||
| Constellation | 1 | ||
| Launch mass | 3,600 kg (7,937 lb) | ||
| Dimensions | 2.280 × 2.760 × 5.170 m (7.5 × 9.1 × 17.0 ft) | ||
| Power | 2,000 W | ||
| Design life | 8.5 | ||
| Production | |||
| Status | Under construction | ||
| |||
The Sentinel-5 precursor, Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5 represent elements complementary of a constellation intended to serve the needs of Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). Sentinel-4 will consist of two instruments integrated onboard a Meteosat Third Generation Sounder (MTG-S) satellite to observe primarily the tropospheric composition of the Earth's atmosphere.
The data will be gathered and made available to the Copernicus program with the aim of contributing to air quality applications such as with the Copernicus Atmosphere Services as well as the air quality monitoring over the regions of Europe and Northern Africa.
As with other aspects of the Copernicus programme, the Sentinel-4 initiative is funded mostly through the EU and the technical design and development has been put under responsibility of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The mission objective, as stated from the official European Space Agency website, is to observe the amount of particulate matter in the air above Europe and North Africa. They seek to monitor impacting compounds such as O3 (Ozone), NO2 (Nitrogen dioxide), SO2 (Sulfur dioxide), HCHO (Formaldehyde), and more. The information gathered from the satellite will then be used to instill European laws in their own benefit.
For the detection and measurement of atmospheric characteristics, two payload instruments have been designed; the Ultra-Violet and Near Infra-Red Multispectral Spectrometer (S4 UVN) and the Infra Red Sounder (S4 IRS). The two instruments will be embarked on two Eumetsat Meteosat Third Generation Sounder (MTG-S) satellites due to be launched in 2024 and 2034.