In recent days, the European Council approved a budget of 3,786 million Euros over seven years for the program originally called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and now known as Copernicus. It’s an initiative of ESA and the European Commission to create an autonomous system for the control of the territory.

The GMES program isn’t new since the first agreement for its development came in 1998 with the name Global Monitoring for Environmental Security then slightly modified the following year. However, it was only in 2008 that there was the launch of the first services of Fast Track Services (FTS), meaning the ones of the land and at sea monitoring and the emergency response. Once fully operational, the GMES / Copernicus should also monitor the atmosphere and climate change.

In recent years, climate change has become a key factor to keep in consideration. The many natural disasters that are happening are to be addressed with the utmost attention seeking if possible to foresee them to take appropriate countermeasures in time or at least be ready to activate the emergency services required in the best ways.

The GMES / Copernicus is European but it’s becoming clearer and clearer that an international collaboration is needed to address the best way the challenges of a world that’s changing in various ways. For this reason, this project will be the European contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Global Systems (GEOSS), which aims to create a unified infrastructure for the sharing of environmental data collected by the participating nations.

ESA has various satellites already in orbit for meteorological, topographic and other specific functions concerning in some ways the monitoring of the territory. Among them there was Envisat (Environmental Satellite), which unfortunately has suddenly stopped working last year.

The big step forward for the GMES / Copernicus will be done with the launch of the satellites of the Sentinel series. There are five types of satellites with a variety of instruments to monitor the best way land, sea and atmosphere. The hope is to send into orbit the first Sentinel within 2013 to continue with the launch of the other Sentinels in the coming years.

A few days ago, ESA and NASA announced an agreement to ensure interoperability between the ESA’s Sentinel-2 type satellites and the Landsat Data Continuity Mission – aka Landsat 8 – launched last week by NASA with the same goal. This will benefit the users who’ll be able to use the data from the various satellites.

The GMES / Copernicus is important in many ways but there’s also the economic side. According to a recent study by the European Commission, it will create about 83,000 jobs in Europe by 2030 and generate four times the money spent.

Now only the final approval by the European Parliament is needed in order to move forward with the GMES / Copernicus program. Hoping that there are no issues, ESA proves again it’s a cutting edge space agency concerning science and technology but it’s also engaged in projects that could gain a significant financial return.

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