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Sentinel-1A has been launched from Kourou on a Soyuz rocket on 3rd April 2014. The second satellite Sentinel-1B is planned to be launched first half of 2016. The In-Orbit Commissioning phase was completed on 23 September 2014, followed by the so-called operational qualification phase (ramp-up). This ramp-up operations phase is a phase during which the capacity of the overall system, including the ground segment operations, is progressively increased, together with the gradual release of the operationally qualified products. The ramp-up phase is being completed at the time of writing this paper (end May 2015); at this stage the routine operations are starting. The Full Operation Capacity (FOC) of the mission will be reached once the In-Orbit Commissioning phase of Sentinel-1B and the subsequent constellation operational qualification phase will have been completed, indicatively by end 2016. The paper provides high-level information on the ongoing mission operations, at the time of the ramp-up phase completion. It described at high level the system operations, incl. ground segment operational activities, as well as some user data access statistics. It presents few examples of mission results achieved during the first year of Sentinel-1A in orbit, in some key application domains.

The Atmospheric Dynamics Mission ADM-AEOLUS, the second Earth Explorer Core mission part of ESA's Living Planet Programme, will provide global observations of wind profiles from space to improve the quality of weather forecasts, and to advance our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and climate processes. By demonstrating new laser technology, AEOLUS is seen as an investigational mission paving the way for future meteorological satellites. A substantial decrease in the operational effort associated to the routine mission phase is one of the mission's major goals. This calls for definition of an innovative operational concept aimed at minimising ground intervention both in nominal and contingency situations. This is realised through robust mission planning and the use of both on board autonomy and operational automation in the ground systems. This paper will discuss the AEOLUS on-board autonomy in particular related to the instrument routine operations and failure recovery, present an outline of the AEOLUS Mission Planning system and provide an overview of the automation implemented in the AEOLUS Ground Systems. The AEOLUS Flight Operations Segment (FOS) is based on extensive re-use of elements developed in the context of previous Earth Observation ground segments. It is the first mission incorporating some of the latest ESA Ground Operation System (EGOS) infrastructure developments i.e. mission control system (SCOS-2000), network interfacing (NIS) and spacecraft simulator (SIMSAT), and in particular new developments in the area of control system automation (MATIS) and integrated ground station management (EMS). A summary of the overall ground segment will be provided and the FOS specific facilities required to support the mission will be discussed. The AEOLUS FOS Mission Planning System (MPS) concept will be further elaborated highlighting its simplicity of use, the modular design and its distributed complexity across the ground segment centres: FOS and Payload Data Segment (PDS). The MPS cycle and ground segment automation features will be fully described covering how the commanding and operations are planned, how the use of Automatic and Release based commanding stacks allows self-regulating TC uplink activities, how automation of ground station pass scheduling and operations is done using MATIS and how the EMS is planned to be used to support the AEOLUS routine operations.

The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme main objective is to support Europe’s goals regarding sustainable development and global governance of the environment by providing timely and quality data, information, services and knowledge. To achieve this objective, the GMES programme features a Space Segment component comprising five Sentinels mission families. Scheduled for launch in 2011 and 2012, Sentinels 1, 2 and 3 represent the first step in the deployment of the GMES Space Segment. They are regarded as operational missions and as such require a high degree of reliability and availability also at the level of the ground segment while minimising the operational effort associated to the routine mission phase. This paper will describe the assumptions and constraints driving the definition of the GMES-Sentinels Flight Operations Segment (FOS). The resulting Operational Concept applied across the 3 missions will be summarised highlighting the innovative aspects, in particular the automated payload mission planning based on Orbit Position scheduled telecommands. Finally, a summary of the overall ground segment will be provided and the Sentinels FOS specific facilities, based on extensive use of ESOC ground software infrastructure, presented.

The next generation of European earth observation missions will make use of information security services to protect the mission communication infrastructure. A common security baseline denition for all these missions is currently envisaged. In this paper, we identify the security needs of such a mission, specify space and ground segment security requirements, propose a robust operational concept and identify the impact of security on the existing FOS infrastructure.