Division 1 SCOPE OF THE SPACE COMPONENT TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

The Copernicus Space Component shall include the following activities:

1. (a)

   Development, Launch and Operations of dedicated Copernicus Satellites (Sentinels);

2. (b)

   Processing and generation of Sentinel Data Products based on the acquired data;

3. (c)

   Data Dissemination;

4. (d)

   Procurement and delivery of data from Third Party Satellite missions (Copernicus Contributing Missions), in case data requested by the Copernicus Services cannot be provided by the Sentinels.

The Satellite Data products shall be used by the Copernicus services and other users who, in combination with data from multiple sources, convert the data into uniform geophysical variables or higher level information products.

The Copernicus Space Component shall be designed following data and observation requirements from the Copernicus Core Users (Union institutions and bodies, European, national, regional or local authorities active in the domain of atmosphere monitoring, marine environment monitoring, land monitoring, climate change, emergency management and security). They shall form the basis for the definition of the Copernicus Space Component System Requirements.

The Copernicus requirements for space-based Earth Observation data covering the 2014-2020 period shall be documented in the ‘Data Warehouse Requirements document’ (version 2.x). It shall contain the requirements collected from Copernicus Services and Copernicus users requesting Earth Observation data. The updates of the document shall be taken into account for the evolution of the Copernicus Space Component. The data requirements are set out in Table 1.