Launch of Sentinel satellite to keep eye on Earth surface

The first optical imaging satellite in Europe's Copernicus environmental surveillance programme blasted off from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on Tuesday. The satellite was launched on a Vega rocket from Kourou and its journey into Earth orbit was set to take about 55 minutes. Sentinel-2 is a polar-orbiting, multispectral high-resolution imaging mission for land monitoring to provide imagery of vegetation, soil and water cover, inland waterways and coastal areas. More

(Source: Telegraph.co.uk - Jun 24)