September 11, 2015

CNES opens access to Copernicus satellite data through PEPS platform

With its unique fleet of six families of dedicated Sentinel satellites and payloads on Eumetsat satellites, Copernicus is set to generate a wealth of very-high-quality data with unequalled spatial and temporal coverage. To meet France’s needs, CNES is offering free access to these data via its Sentinel Product Exploitation Platform (PEPS).

The first satellite in the series, Sentinel-1A, carrying a radar imaging instrument, was launched by Soyuz from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) on 3 April 2014 and is already delivering precious data on the movements of Earth’s crust, volcanoes, ice and oceans. The second, Sentinel-2A, was orbited on 23 June 2015 by Vega and will provide the capability to observe all of the planet’s land surfaces in just 10 days with a multispectral optical imaging instrument. Sentinel-3A, set to launch at the end of this year, will monitor the terrestrial and marine biosphere and measure ocean topography. Other Sentinels will follow as the launch rate is stepped up a gear over the next five years.

The Copernicus programme led by the European Commission, for which the European Space Agency (ESA) is supplying the space component, operates services for land, marine and atmosphere monitoring, emergency management, security and climate change monitoring. The programme entered its operational phase in 2014. ESA processes and distributes Sentinel products to Copernicus services and to users in Europe and around the world.

As the national point of contact for collaborative Copernicus ground segments and a key player in France’s space policy, CNES has developed the PEPS platform to offer French users high-performance access to the huge volumes of Sentinel data (50 times more than from Europe’s Envisat satellite). PEPS is geared to the needs of the scientific community, is helping to implement and track environment and security policies, and fostering downstream services and the industrial development that goes with them.

Developed by CNES’s IT centre and its leading-edge data storage systems, PEPS lets users search for, display, select and download data. Online data processing features will also soon be available. PEPS is a pioneering platform set to evolve into an integrated system coordinated at European level, working with Big Data and Cloud firms.

With PEPS and its Earth-observation space missions, CNES is contributing with its national, European and international partners to Copernicus activities, notably for environmental monitoring, climate change mitigation and coping strategies, and implementation of the commitments to be made at the COP21 climate conference in Paris this December.

To access the PEPS platform, go to: https://peps.cnes.fr
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Contacts
Pascale Bresson    Tel. +33 (0)1 44 76 75 39    pascale.bresson@cnes.fr
Alain Delrieu    Tel. +33 (0)1 44 76 74 04    alain.delrieu@cnes.fr
Julien Watelet    Tel. +33 (0)1 44 76 78 37    julien.watelet@cnes.fr