European Space Agency (ESA) is finally going to stop repairing and maintaining Sentinel 1B radar imaging satellites. Sentinel 1B will be replaced by 1C.
Highlights
- On December 23rd, 2021, Sentinel 1B was unable to deliver radar data.
- It experienced an issue with the electronics power supply.
- Despite all the efforts, it is concluded that Sentinel 1B will be discontinued.
- Sentinel 1A is working just fine despite being in space longer than 1B.
- The plan for ESA is to launch sentinel 1C to cover the data which was handled by 1B.
On 23rd December 2021, Sentinel 1B faced an issue related to the electronic power supply which was supplied by the satellite platform.
Since then, engineers have been working on the satellite but it is still not fixed. Many operators and engineers were deployed to repair but it was all in vain.
After all the attempts to repair and rectify the error in Sentinel 1B, it was decided by the ESA and EU commission that the satellite will be discontinued.
Sentinel 1A is still working well and will be on duty for longer but after the Sentinel 1B issues, its data is making things difficult. So, ESA and the EU commission have decided that Sentinel 1C will be launched to replace 1B.
Sentinel 1C will hopefully be launched around the second quarter of 2024. EU Commission has said that the unavailability of the data from Sentinel 1B has been a significant loss for them. They hope to replace the satellite as quickly as possible.
Sentinel 1B was launched in 2016 and was a mission to provide important data to the ESA and EU commission. Its main mission is to image the whole planet with a maximum repeat frequency of six days.
Sentinel 1B was provided with a mission to observe the artic sea-ice monitoring and iceberg tracking and some mapping of the huge iceberg which can be dangerous.
It was also used to monitor the marine environment, oil-spill monitoring, and ship detection for marine time security.
All these data are most important for the EU commission and will be a huge problem for them if not continued after some time.
