Satellites

Sentinel-1

Always useful, even when the skies are overcast

Sentinel-1 is a two satellite, polar-orbiting RADAR constellation The radar collects data from Earth in all weather conditions, even through clouds. This data is suitable for monitoring the stability of infrastructures, among others. Sentinel-1 achieves a resolution of 5 by 20 m, comparable to the surface area of a commercial warehouse.

Observe Earth with Sentinel-1

Sentinel-2

Unprecedented view of Earth

The Sentinel-2 mission consists of 2 polar-orbiting satellites that return over the same location every 5 days. There they image the Earth under constant sun elevation. They generate multispectral images covering a 290-km wide strip (e.g., from Calais to Verviers) and with a resolution up to 10 m – allowing viewers to distinguish single-family homes.
The satellites provide an unprecedented view of Earth and changes in vegetation, land and water masses, waterways and coastal areas.

View the vegetation with Sentinel-2

Sentinel-3

Land and sea data from space

Sentinel-3 delivers highly accurate and reliable optical, thermal and altitude data for marine and land use. The Sentinel-3A and -3B satellites measure the topography of the sea surface, the temperature at sea and on land, and the colour of land and ocean.
Sentinel-3 images achieve a resolution up to 300 m.

Explore Sentinel-3 data

Sentinel-5P

Monitoring various atmospheric components and air quality

Sentinel-5 Precursor is designed to daily observe and monitor various atmospheric components and air quality. With an unprecedented resolution of 3.5 × 5.5 km2, the satellite and its on-board Tropospheric Ozone Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) can detect air pollution and its sources at sub-urban scale.

Explore Sentinel-5 data

PROBA-V

Global vegetation on the map

PROBA-V monitored our Earth’s surface every day for more than 7 years and provided us over 1 Petabyte of valuable global land cover and vegetation data. PROBA-V will remain a valuable data source in many end-user product, including several products of the Copernicus Global Land Service, to assess climate change and monitor agriculture and food safety, among others.

Explore vegetation with PROBA-V

Global land cover map at 10 m resolution

Monitoring global land cover changes is essential in managing the Earth's natural capital such as soils, forests, water resources and biodiversity. Given the changing state of this natural capital, the need for timely, accurate and high resolution land cover information is more pressing than ever.

In October 2021 ESA's WorldCover consortium released a brand new and freely accessible global land cover map at 10 m resolution for 2020, based on both Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data. One year later the WorldCover team released WorldCover 2021, a new and improved version of the product for 2021 with even higher quality! The WorldCover maps are available via a dedicated online viewer. You can view and download data, access area statistics, compare regions and countries and send user feedback. Terrascope connected with WorldCover to expand its reach and offer access to the different products.

Since June 2023 you can also access the WorldCover annual composites, a set of yearly median and percentiles composites at 10 m resolution, derived from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 archives, for the years 2020 and 2021. The products can be visualized and explored using the WorldCover viewer. WMS layers are also available from the Terrascope WMS service.

WorldCover Map

global coverage
land cover map of 2020 and 2021
spatial resolution of 10 m
11 land cover classes
overall accuracy of 74,7 - 76,7 %

WorldCover Annual Composites

Sentinel-2 RGBNIR median composite
Sentinel-2 SWIR median composite
Sentinel-2 NDVI percentiles composite
Sentinel-1 GAMMA0 median composite

WorldCover data

Copernicus Land Monitoring service

Satellite and sensor collaboration

Copernicus Land Monitoring Service combines data from PROBA-V and data from sensor networks on the earth’s surface. This results in up-to-date geographical information, intended for water and forest management, agriculture and food safety, nature conservation and spatial planning, to name a few.

LAI (Leaf Area Index)

shows how dense the vegetation cover is, so it is biomass indicator
synthesis over 10 days
resolution of 300 metres

fAPAR (Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation)

shows the photosynthesis activity for green vegetation
synthesis over 10 days
resolution of 300 metres

discover the Copernicus Land monitorinG SERVICE

Copernicus Digital Elevation Model

Three-dimensional (3D) representations of the Earth's surface

The Copernicus Digital Elevation Model is a pixel based representation of the ground surface topography with respect to the Earth Gravitational Model 2008 geoid. It covers all land masses, including buildings, infrastructure, and vegetation, and is used for geocorrection of satellite imagery, and as a data source for e.g. hydrological modeling and disaster risk management.

The Copernicus DEM is delivered in 3 different instances, named EEA-10, GLO-30 and GLO-90, which have different resolutions, different geographic extents and different formats. Within Terrascope, we provide access to the two publicly available versions of the Copernicus DEM, GLO-30 and GLO-90. It is provided in tiles of 1° latitude and 1° longitude, and in Cloud Optimized GEOTIFF format.

GLO-90

Global coverage
Point spacing of about 90 m

GLO-30

Almost global coverage
Point spacing of about 30 m

Discover the data