News / Brèves Strategic Defence / Défense stratégique Back to previous selection / Retour à la sélection précédente ESA Sentinel Satellite Launched — By a Russian Launch Vehicle 6 April 2014 (EIRNS) — Sentinel-1A, the first satellite of the "Copernicus" European space program, was successfully launched April 3 from the Kourou base in Guyana. Each Sentinel mission is based on a constellation of two satellites providing robust data sets for Copernicus Services. These missions carry a range of technologies, such as radar and multi-spectral imaging instruments for land, ocean and atmospheric monitoring. Sentinel-1 is a polar-orbiting, all-weather, day-and-night radar imaging mission for land and ocean services. The first Sentinel (1A) was built in Italy by Thales Alenia Space, and is able to map the Earth’s surface with incredible precision: It can, for instance, detect a 2 cm shift in altitude in the course of a year. The program includes six Sentinel systems. The Copernicus system was planned to monitor a lot of environmentalist stuff, including "climate change," but can be profitably used for other purposes, including earthquake precursors. Also, it can very easily produce data for a feasibility study for Transaqua and other major infrastructure, all over the world. Ironically, the satellite was launched by a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket, showing how vital is Europe’s collaboration with Russia, which the British Empire wants to destroy through sanctions.[ccc]