St3TART

Sentinel-3 Topography mission Assessment through Reference Techniques

ESA-EOPG-CSCOP-SOW-29

Period: 2021 – 2023 (24 months)
Partners: NOVELTIS (Prime contractor, FR) has assembled a consortium of excellence consisting of numerous partners:

  • Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES), France
  • Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Denmark
  • Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI), Norway
  • vorteX.io, France
  • SErvice Régional de Traitement d’Image et de Télédétection (SERTIT/Conectus), France
  • Institute of Geodesy (GIS), University of Stuttgart, Germany
  • Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica (CNR-IRPI), Italy
  • Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), France
  • Ocean Next, France
  • Institute of Environmental Geosciences (IGE), France
  • Laboratoire d’Océanographie et du Climat: Expérimentation et Approches Numériques (LOCEAN), France
  • Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales (LEGOS), France
  • National Physical Laboratory (NPL), United Kingdom
  • Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), France
  • Technical Division from the Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers (DT-INSITU),France
  • Sytèmes de Référence Temps Espace (SYRTE), France
  • Continental and Coastal Morphodynamics Laboratory (M2C), France

Description: The St3TART project aims to provide a supply of fiducial reference measurements (FRMs) in support of the ESA Sentinel-3 (S3) Mission Cal/Val activities through the preparation of a roadmap and a preliminary proof of concept on terrestrial surfaces of interest, i.e. inland water bodies (lakes, reservoirs, rivers, including estuarine areas), sea ice and land ice areas (ice sheets, mountain glaciers).

Project activities will rely on different fields of expertise, both specific and transversal. The specific activities are divided into three thematic areas:

  • Hydrology: The primary parameter of interest is water level, and the verification of S3 products may also consider other derived parameters such as river flow and lake water storage variations (WP1).
  • Sea ice: the main parameters of interest are sea ice thickness and freeboard, as well as the depth of snow depth over sea ice (WP2).
  • Land ice: the parameter of interest is the land ice topography (WP3).

The transverse activities concern:

  • The development of the FRM data hub to disseminate the data to the various Cal/Val stakeholders of the S3 mission Performance Center and S3VT (WP4).
  • The development of the Super Cal/Val Site Identifier Tool (SCalSIT) tool to help interested stakeholders contribute to the selection of additional calibration sites and measurement opportunities for inland waters (WP5).
  • The promotion of the project (WP6).
  • The support in terms of general metrology approach to consolidate the error and uncertainty budgets (WP7).
  • The project management (WP8).

More information are available at the website: https://sentinel3-st3tart.noveltis.fr/

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