With the second Copernicus-dedicated Sentinel satellite just months away from launch, ESA and France's CNES space agency, have signed a collaborative agreement on managing and accessing Sentinel data.

The Sentinel family of satellites is being developed to meet the operational needs of Europe's environment monitoring programme, Copernicus. The first in the fleet, Sentinel-1A, has been in orbit for just under a year while the next, Sentinel-2A, is scheduled for launch in June.

The data provided by the Earth-observing missions are freely accessible for Copernicus Services, as well as to scientific and other users.

At an event held today at ESA's Headquarters in Paris, ESA and France signed an Understanding for the Sentinel Collaborative Ground Segment Cooperation, which aims to facilitate Sentinel data exploitation in the country.