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back to article Europe's Earth-watching sat beams back icy first pic

Europe's Sentinel-1B Earth-watching satellite has delivered its first image, a tad over two days after soaring aloft from Kourou, French Guiana, and a mere two hours after its Synthetic Aperture Radar was fired up. Norway's Svalbard archipelago - including the Austfonna glacier - was the satellite's inaugural snap (full …

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  1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    Stunning images

    Well done those engineers!

    5 0 Reply
  2. nematoad

    "...which have slipped the surly bonds of Earth"

    + 1 for the "High Flight" quote

    3 0 Reply
  3. Brian O'Byrne

    Polar orbits 180 degrees apart... so on the same plane but moving in opposite directions? .. or on the same plane moving in the same direction but on opposite sides of the planet?

    0 1 Reply
    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      Same plane, same direction, opposite sides. Handy animation here: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Satellite_constellation

      5 0 Reply
  4. Paul Cooper

    History

    Amazingly, Julian Dowdeswell and I published the first more or less accurate map of Austfonna only 30 years ago! (Dowdeswell, J. A., and A. P. R. Cooper, Digital mapping in polar regions from Landsat photographic products: a case study, Annals of Glaciology, 8, 47-50, 1986.) In fact we did the work a few years earlier (in about 1983) but there was some delay in publishing. Worth bearing in mind that in those days, digital processing of images was confined to a few specialist laboratories; the equipment was extremely expensive; far too much so for a small research group, even in the University of Cambridge.What is striking is that even at a fairly cursory glance, there are major changes in the ice cap since then.

    12 0 Reply
    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: History

      Superb: http://www.igsoc.org:8080/annals/8/igs_annals_vol08_year1985_pg47-50.pdf

      4 0 Reply
  5. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Forget the science for a moment...

    And bathe in the glorious beauty of the Northern wastes.

    FYI - There isn't enough life on that ice cube to fill a space cruiser!

    2 0 Reply
  6. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Nice pic. Glaciers are cool.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Stoneshop
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Glaciers are cool.

      Of course they are, otherwise they'd be rivers.

      5 0 Reply
  7. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Must. Build. Big. Radar Corner Reflector.

    I want to leave my mark on radarsat datasets.

    1 0 Reply
    1. harmjschoonhoven
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Re: Must. Build. Big. Radar Corner Reflector.

      The hi-res mode offers a resolution of 5mx5m. So may be you can build an array of corner reflectors and leave a message.

      1 0 Reply
  8. energystar
    Go

    Congratulating ESA Community of Nations and the Russian Launching Teams.

    0 0 Reply

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