GGPChat

Went looking for news on when Sentinel 1B is going to be replaced by the shiny and new 1C. Came across this snippet from the end of August, you may recall the 1B satellite was declared officially "gubbed" on the 3rd August.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/spacewatch ... ntinel-1c/

Included in the article are a couple of very handy explanatory pictures of what the SAR Sentinels covered when both worked (Figure 1) And what 1A can cover on its own (in Figure 2):


And zooming in on Australia it is apparent that HAV nestles in an unfortunate corner of "no radar coverage", so near and yet so far. What a <insert appropriate descriptor>.

18th Aug 23

Sentinel-1B was declared official dead on 3rd August 2022 - "bad soldering" was blamed for weakening a capacitor in a power supply, tsk tsk, always wipe your soldering iron tip properly - and not on your trouser leg. Sentinel-1B is the satellite that did radar for our latitude at HAV. The good news is that they are launching Sentinel-1C in 2023.

The rocket used is part manufactured in Ukraine - so we can blame that pesky Putin for causing uncertainty about quite when. The intention is for 1C to fill in the blanks left by the sad demise of 1B. Originally Sentinels 1A, 1B, 1C and 1D were going to cover the globe with radar, with gaps between updates, 12 days for Western Australia, reducing as more satellites get into orbit.

The rocket that takes the satellite into orbit was tested OK, so there is hope that the Sentinel 1C will be launched before the end of 2023. Although anticipate nine months to commission all the instruments before we get to see radar images again.

I hesitate to use the word "delay" in relation to anything GGP-ish. However, the internet has just offered up this snippet of news about the launch of Sentinel 1C - the replacement radar satellite that covers our favourite parts of Australia:

" The launch of Sentinel-1C is now scheduled for March 2024, following a delay due to a launch failure of Vega-C in December 2022. "

This news of a minimum three month delay is buried in here, search for the phrase "1C" or read the whole page and learn everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, about the Sentinel radar satellites:

https://www.eoportal.org/satellite-miss ... 1#launches