The health of the Earth seen from space, showing the first pictures taken by Sentinel 2 – Tiscali

Millions of photos, all completely free, the world saw in the 13 “colors” of special eyes hi-tech Sentinel 2 , the sentinel European Space Agency launched just a month ago. The satellite is set to be fully operational but meanwhile gives the first spectacular images presented in a press conference in Milan. The data that will collect in the coming months will have application in many sectors, from a help to farmers up to monitoring pollution and support in the event of environmental disasters.

Sentinel 2 will check the health of the planet – Launched on June 23, Sentinel 2 is the second satellite in the program Copernicus , launched by EU Commission and European Space Agency (ESA), and is intended to check the health of our planet, especially of agricultural land and forests. Among the most interesting images collected so far there are the spectacular mosaic of farmland, with different cultures, near Avezzano. This kind of data can, for example, offer important information for improving crop yields and to identify the state of health of the land. Italy also the protagonist of the other two shots, Lake Garda where you can the state of water pollution and the Ahrntal Valley in South Tyrol, showing the withdrawal of the snow.

Images will be available online – “A short sarenno launched two Sentinel, the twins Sentinel and Sentinel-1A-2A,” said Volker Liebig, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation programs. “All the images – he added – will be available online and we hope that the photographs of the Sentinel will be downloaded by millions of users, for use of various types for environmental sensing, for commercial purposes but also by interested. We are convinced that overcome quickly a record $ 2 million downloads already made with data from Sentinel-1A “.

Within a few years a flock of Sentinel will monitor the Earth – The Sentinel-2 satellite ESA, positioned himself in a stable orbit at about 800 km altitude, it will be reached soon by other Sentinel. “With this first pair – stressed Israel – will be able to monitor any point on the planet every five days.” In the coming years will be launched ten satellites Sentinel. The first two, the cost of which was a total of about 340 million euro, are part of a “flock” will be to form in a few years. The Copernicus program, funded with a total of 2.3 billion euro (1.6 by ESA member countries and 600,000 Euros by the EU Commission) provides the launch of ten satellites are characterized by different specifications.