 lack of service continuity on the long-term).The idea for a global and continuous European earth observation system was developed under the name of Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) which was later re-branded into Copernicus after the EU became directly involved in financing and development.It follows and greatly expands on the work of the previous 2.3 billion euros European Envisat program which operated from 2002 to 2012.