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A Vega rocket has successfully lifted-off the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-2A Earth observation satellite from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The 1.1t satellite will support the European Union Copernicus environmental monitoring system with a high-resolution optical imaging capability.

Vega’s upper-stage delivered Sentinel-2A into the targeted orbit, 7min 42sec after lift-off. The satellite separated from the stage around 55min into the flight.

ESA’s operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, has established telemetry links and attitude control with the Sentinel’s systems.

Controllers will start calibrating the instruments to commission the satellite and begin the mission in three to four months.

The Sentinel-2A mission will assist the management of food security, as well as provide information related to pollution of lakes and coastal waters, floods, volcanic eruptions and landslides.

"It will support important areas of benefit to society such as food security and forest monitoring."

ESA Earth observation programmes director Volker Liebig said: "Sentinel-2A, with its optical camera, is a complement to the radar images from Sentinel-1A.

"It will support important areas of benefit to society such as food security and forest monitoring."

The imaging instrument on the Sentinel-2A uses 13 spectral channels to deliver multispectral images of the Earth’s surface at an image width of 290km.

EU’s Copernicus environmental monitoring network comprises six families of Sentinel satellites. The programme is designed to provide data on land surfaces, oceans and atmosphere to support environmental and security policy-making.

ESA plans to launch Sentinel-2B in mid-2016. The agency is currently working on 14 Sentinel satellites, with Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5 planned for lift-off as payloads on six meteorological satellites.

Image: Artist impression of the Sentinel-2 high-resolution, multispectral capabilities. Photo: courtesy of ESA/ATG medialab.