Less than a week after its launch, the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite has delivered its first radar images of Earth – offering a glimpse into its capabilities for environmental monitoring. These initial images feature regions of interest, including Svalbard in Norway, the Netherlands, and Brussels, Belgium.

Satellites in orbit can become absentminded. Space radiation randomly flips onboard memory bits, potentially corrupting mission data and functionality. To better understand how this invisible onslaught works in practice, a team systematically analysed how radiation affected the memories of ESA’s three Swarm spacecraft during a decade of mapping Earth’s magnetic field.

Relive the Vega-C launch, flight VV25, from various angles.

The third Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite, Sentinel-1C, has launched aboard a Vega-C rocket, flight VV25, from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The rocket lifted off on 5 December 2024 at 22:20 CET (18:20 local time).

Sentinel-1C extends the legacy of its predecessors, delivering high-resolution radar imagery to monitor Earth’s changing environment, supporting a diverse range of applications and advance scientific research. Additionally, Sentinel-1C introduces new capabilities for detecting and monitoring maritime traffic.

The launch also marks Vega-C’s ‘return to flight’, a key step in restoring Europe’s independent access to space. Vega-C is the evolution of the Vega family of rockets and delivers increased performance,