article_snippet.sent: Monitoring sea ice, oil spills, winds and waves, land-use change and to respond to emergencies such as floods and earthquakes .
article_snippet.sent: The satellite uses a technique called 'Synthetic aperture radar interferometry'.
article_snippet.sent: Two or more satellite radar images of the same area are combined to detect large-scale changes.
article_snippet.sent: Sentinel-1A's swath width of 155 miles (250km) over land surfaces has allowed for an unprecedented area size to be analysed from a single scan.
article_snippet.sent: The satellite ability to 'see' through cloud and rain and in pitch darkness make The satellite particularly useful for monitoring earthquakes and for offering images for emergency response.
article_snippet.sent: Sentinel-1A is the first satellite for the Copernicus environment-monitoring programme led by the European Commission.
article_snippet.sent: The Copernicus EMS was activated on the day the earthquake struck, prompting the European Commission to begin collecting satellite imagery, which is being made available to support relief efforts.
article_snippet.sent: The orbital track of the satellites and the specific capabilities of the sensors on board determine whether we have imagery to share.
article_snippet.sent: Sentinel-1 carries a radar that works in several specialised modes to provide detailed imagery (artist's impression left).
article_snippet.sent: The data will be used for applications such as monitoring the oceans, including shipping lanes, sea ice and oil spills.
article_snippet.sent: The April 23 image was acquired by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 .