The program is organized around a Space component and a service component to aid management and decision-making in six thematic domains: climate change, atmosphere monitoring, marine monitoring, land monitoring, emergency response and services for security applications. The satellites currently up and running under this program are Sentinel-1A and 1B for radar observations, Sentinel-2A for high-resolution optical observations and Sentinel-3A for atmosphere monitoring. Meantime work is underway for the launch of Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5 for monitoring atmospheric quality indicators.

The program as a whole represents a milestone in the use of Space data for environmental applications, broken down into atmosphere, marine environments, climate change and continental environments, security and emergencies.

In 2015, within the Space segment, the European Commission established a framework contract with a GMV-led consortium, including the Belgium firm Spactec Partner and the French firms FDC and Noveltis, with the remit of recording user requirements for the program’s future generation of satellites. Late 2016 saw completion of the first phase of compiling over 3000 service and earth-observation requirements furnished by European and international users.

This consortium has recently signed the third specific contract with the Commission to advance in three crucial aspects towards the design of the next generation of the Copernicus program’s Space component: prioritization of user requirements in terms of social, SPACE, economic, political and technical aspects; the characteristics of future data, as necessary for realizing the products sought by the earth-observation user community; and lastly, appraisal of the technology and developing it as necessary to ensure that future Copernicus observation missions develop as required for each service.

The above mentioned process represents a milestone in support for the European Commission in the Copernicus decision-making process. Member states are now regularly informed of results through the Copernicus User Forum, a consultation body for consolidation of the earth observation program in each European country; other participants are the delegated entities, the European Environmental Agency (EEA), the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Center for Medium range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), FRONTEX and the EU Satellite Centre (SatCen).

Under this new contract GMV is managing the integrity and traceability of the database architecture, data analysis for future service chains and also vetting of the most suitable technology for achieving future challenges.