The Sentinel-2B satellite launched in March 2017 is part of Europe’s Copernicus system of Earth-observation satellites.

The European Space Agency on July 1 awarded 2.5 billion euros in development contracts for six new Earth-observation missions under the Copernicus remote-sensing satellite program.

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Brian Berger is editor in chief of SpaceNews.com and the SpaceNews magazine. He joined SpaceNews.com in 1998, spending his first decade with the publication covering NASA. He was named senior staff writer in 2004, a position he held until being named...