As part of the Sentinel-3 mission and in order to ensure the highest
quality of products, ESA and EUMETSAT set up the Sentinel-3 Mission
Performance Centre (S-3 MPC). This facility is part of the Payload Data
Ground Segment (PDGS) and aims at controlling the quality of all generated
products, from L0 to L2. The S-3 MPC is composed of a Coordinating Centre
(CC), where the core infrastructure is hosted, which is in charge of the
main routine activities (especially the quality control of data) and the
overall service management. Expert Support Laboratories (ESLs) are involved
in calibration and validation activities and provide specific assessment of
the products (e.g., analysis of trends, ad hoc analysis of anomalies,
etc.). The S-3 MPC interacts with the Processing Archiving Centers (PACs)
and the marine centre at EUMETSAT. The S-3 MPC service contract is
currently carried out by 23-partners consortium led by ACRI-ST, France.
The S-3 MPC contract was kick-offed in September 2014 with a first set-up
phase of 12 months. After the launch of S3-A (planned before end of 2015),
the S-3 MPC will start its second phase to support commissioning
activities. Then a routine operation phase of up to 5 years will begin,
including the commissioning activities related to S3-B.
The main S-3 MPC activities are:
– Calibration: to update on-board and on-ground configuration data in order
to meet product quality requirements.
– Validation: to assess, by independent means with respect to the methods
and tools used for calibration, the quality of the generated data products.
Validation functions provide feedback to calibration and data processors
corrective and perfective maintenance activities.
– Verification: to confirm that the specified requirements on a system have
been satisfied.
– Quality Control: to routinely monitor the status of the sensor and to
check if the derived products (Level 0, Level 1 and Level 2) meet the
quality requirements along mission lifetime.
– Algorithm Maintenance and Evolution: to maintain the algorithm
documentation baseline and to perform the necessary corrections/evolutions
as agreed with the mission management and to validate them.
– System performance monitoring: to monitor the end-to-end performance of
the Sentinel-3 relevant system operations and assess them with respect to
the operations plan.
Arctus will be the ESL responsible for the Algorithm Maintenance and
Evolution of the Marine L2 products.