[Satnews] Visitors to the EC’s up-coming European Space Solutions conference at The Hague will be able to learn more about the benefits of the Copernicus marine mission when EUMETSAT and Mercator Ocean team up to host a side event on the themes El Nino, water quality and marine transport.

The European Space Solutions conference brings together business, policy makers, developers of spaced-based solutions and users to provide opportunities for learning, exchange of information and ideas and networking and will take place from May 30 to June 3 under the auspices of the 2016 Dutch Presidency of the European Council. The side event, “Copernicus: creating value for our oceans,” will occur June 1 from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. and show how marine data derived from space and support services can benefit users in EUMETSAT and EU Member States and beyond. 

EUMETSAT has been entrusted by the EU to undertake, in cooperation with the European Space Agency, routine operations of the recently launched Sentinel-3A satellite and to deliver its marine mission and also to deliver data to Copernicus from the joint European-US Jason-3 ocean altimetry satellite, which was launched in January this year.

Mercator Ocean has been entrusted by the EU to implement and operate the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). The side event will demonstrate how marine data are used and give a first preview of new datasets available as a result of the launches of Jason-3 and Sentinel-3. Copernicus was established in 2014 as the EU’s flagship Earth observation program and Europe’s response to the challenge of global environment monitoring and climate change. The Copernicus program replaces the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme.

Under the legal framework of the Copernicus agreement, signed between the European Union and EUMETSAT in November of 2014, the EU has entrusted EUMETSAT with exploiting four of the six Sentinel missions—Sentinel-3 (marine mission), -4, -5 and -6.

To see the conference agenda and register, please visit http://www.european-space-solutions.eu.  A draft conference programme is now available on-line.