Sentinel-1D is launched on Ariane 6

Nasa Space

The Copernicus Sentinel-1D satellite has joined the Sentinel-1 mission in orbit. Launch took place on 4 November 2025 at 22:03 CET (18:03 local time) on board an Ariane 6 launcher from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.  The Sentinel-1 mission delivers high-resolution radar images of Earth’s surface, performing in all weathers, day-and-night. This service is used by disaster response teams, environmental agencies, maritime authorities and climate scientists, who depend on frequent updates of critical data.  Sentinel-1D will work in tandem with Sentinel-1C, flying in the same orbit but 180° apart, to optimise global coverage and data delivery. Both satellites have a C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument on board, which captures high-resolution imagery of Earth’s surface. They are also equipped with Automatic Identification System (AIS) instruments to improve detection and tracking of ships. When Sentinel-1D is fully operational, it will enable more frequent AIS observations, including data on vessel identity, location and direction of passage, enabling precise tracking.  Sentinel-1D was launched on Europe’s heavy-lift rocket Ariane 6 on flight designated VA265.

Transcript

00:005, 4, 3, 2, 1, top, allommage de CESR et décollage.

00:15La propulsion est nominale.

00:17Le début de la manœuvre en l'arrivée.

00:36Copernica's Sentinel-1D has started its journey on board Europe's newest rocket, Ariane 6,

00:43hauling itself against the gravity of our planet.

00:49Amazing views, wow.

00:51Sensational images from our onboard cameras.

00:55Right now, we are burning three engines.

01:00Our range operations manager is telling us that everything is going normally.

01:06We can hear the rumble.

01:09I can feel the wall of the room shaking.

01:13We can indeed as it flies over.

01:16Wow.

01:18You can see there the two boosters are doing all the work right now, Samuel.

01:23Yeah, almost all the work, 85% of the effort is indeed brought by the boosters.

01:30It's a giant piece of power because they are filled with 142 tons of propellant each,

01:38and we are burning them in a bit more than two minutes.

01:40So we are actually burning around two tons per second here.

01:45That's really massive.

01:47That's a lot of fuel, and we got a great shot of them there, those two dots.

01:53He's telling us that everything is going normally.

01:55And we should potentially see the booster separation that should arrive soon,

01:59and you can see even the third part of the Vulcan engine at the center of the two boosters.

02:06That's right, the white dot is the Vulcan engine, and there we can see the two boosters now being jettisoned.

02:11See that two boosters, one up, one left down, moving away from the central stage.

02:16And they detach from the rocket thanks to a pyrotechnic device, which is made by a company called Pyro Alliance, who are real experts in this.

02:25Indeed, they are providing pyrotechnic systems, and they are used to separate the rocket, to separate rocket elements, as we see on the screen, like boosters.

02:35We use them for the previous step.

02:38We'll use them again in the next steps of our launch, as you'll see.

02:42Nice, super nice videos here from the onboard cameras, where you can see the boosters moving away.

02:48We get those images, for technical reasons, from the onboard cameras, just a few seconds delay.

02:55So, there we can see.

02:57.

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