The first satellite in the two-satellite-mission, Sentinel-2A, is going to be launched this night. The launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 23 June is set for 01:52 GMT (03:52 CEST). A Vega launcher is going to take the satellite into space.
For everybody who is interested in the lunach:
ESA is going to broadcast the event in a webstream that will begin at 01:00 GMT (03:00 CEST) and end at 04:00 GMT (06:00 CEST). A number of the key players in the mission will present on preparing the satellite for launch and discuss its benefits and applications.
The Sentinel-2 mission is part of the Copernicus, a program for terrestrial observations in support of services such as forest monitoring, land cover changes detection, and natural disaster management.
The Sentinel-2 mission consists of optical satellites (Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B). The satellites will have a spatial resolution of 10, 20 and 60m, depending on the bands and the field of view, the swath of view will be up to 290km covering the earth from 56°S up to 84°N and will revisit the equator every 5 days under the same conditions. ESA is following an open data policy.
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Space exploration has never ceased to amaze us all and has for a long time now been the crux of many science fiction movies, the dream of many engineers and space scientists. At some stage or the other, you might have heard the saying “It’s not really rocket science” being used to clarify when something is considered to be “not so difficult”. Rocket Science is considered as one of the most difficult subjects on this planet. In case you are a skeptic, all that I can tell you from personal experience attending orbit mechanics courses is that the saying did not come into existence for nothing!
But really, how hard can rocket science be anyway?
If you are one of those people who don’t want to attend a lecture to find out! How about playing a cool game where you get to build your own space station, mars mission and more! Yup, you read that right! It’s an actual PC game with really cool animation where you can build all those and more. The Kerbal Space Program is a full fledged (real) physics based, flight simulation game that is set in the fictional planet of Kerbal. The planet has all the physics of Earth i.e. the gravity and more. Take a look at the game trailer.
Version 1.0 was recently released and is priced at EUR 40 and a PS4 version is on its way. The game was in sandbox mode for a long time and underwent a lot of changes and definitely is one of the coolest, nerdiest game that I have ever come across. It is probably the first game in the domain of Space exploration and it is really worth your time!
Happy Gaming!
