Sentinel-1B’s first data strip stretches 600 km from 80ยฐN degrees through the Barents Sea.
The image, which shows the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago on the left, was captured on 28 April 2016 at 05:37 GMT (07:37 CEST) – just two hours after the satellite’s radar was switched on. Sentinel-1B lifted off on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 25 April at 21:02 GMT (23:02 CEST). It joins its twin, Sentinel-1A, to provide more ‘radar vision’ for Europe’s environmental Copernicus programme.