With commercial companies playing an increasingly important role in creating a dynamic and innovative space industry, nine New Space satellite data suppliers have joined the Copernicus programme as ‘Contributing Missions’. Copernicus, now 25 years old, is the biggest environmental programme in the world, providing terabytes of free and open satellite data and information services to hundreds of thousands of users every day. The companies in question are: Aerospacelab in Belgium, Prométhée in France and EnduroSat in Bulgaria to supply multispectral images from their different satellite constellations; Kuva Space Oy in Finland to supply hyperspectral images; constellr in Germany, OroraTech also in Germany and Aistech in Spain to provide thermal infrared data from their satellite missions; and Satlantis in Spain and Absolut Sensing in France to provide data on atmospheric composition. Once the companies have their missions in orbit, the data will complement that of the Sentinel missions by providing information about changing land, oceans and atmosphere.
