With the launch of Sentinel-3B, the first set of Sentinels for Copernicus is now in orbit delivering an almost mind-boggling amount of data. While this wealth of information advances environmental monitoring, it also opens up huge business opportunities. To help bring these data to market, ESA and SAP have joined forces to create the World Space Alliance.

The second Sentinel-3 satellite, Copernicus Sentinel-3B, was launched on 25 April, joining its identical twin Sentinel-3A in orbit. This pairing of satellites increases coverage and data delivery for the European Union's Copernicus environment programme.

Recent changes for accessing ESA's Third Party Missions are bringing new benefits to users of Earth observation data worldwide.

The launch of Sentinel-3B will complete the Sentinel-3 constellation and represents the culmination of months of training to fly Europe's latest Copernicus satellite.

The next Sentinel satellite for Europe's environmental monitoring Copernicus programme is poised for liftoff from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia.

Getting a satellite ready to be launched involves a long list of jobs, but with the Copernicus Sentinel-3B satellite now fuelled, this particular 'to do' list is significantly shorter. And, importantly, all is on track for lift-off on 25 April.

The batch of new results from ESA's Swarm mission has not only included the highest-resolution map of the magnetic field generated by Earth's crust and a map of the tiny magnetic signals from the oceans, but also, remarkably, some unexpected insight into lightning in the upper atmosphere and geomagnetic storms.

The magnetic field is arguably one of the most mysterious features of our planet. ESA's Swarm mission is continually yielding more insight into how our protective shield is generated, how it behaves and how it is changing. Adding yet another string to its bow, Swarm is now tracking changes in the magnetic field produced in the oceans in more detail than ever before.

ESA's CryoSat mission has revealed that, over the last seven years, Antarctica has lost an area of underwater ice the size of Greater London. This is because warm ocean water beneath the continent's floating margins is eating away at the ice attached to the seabed.

Awarding outstanding ideas and applications that use Earth observation data to tackle challenges faced by business and society, the Copernicus Masters 2018 competition is now open for submissions.