The satellite carries a C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar which will provide images in all light and weather conditions.

It used to be called GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) and was established by a Regulation that entered into force in 2014.

Activities conducted under the programme included the launch of six families of dedicated, EU-owned earth observation satellites and instruments—the so-called Sentinels—and the ramp-up of the 6 Copernicus Services in the fields of atmosphere-, marine- and land-monitoring, climate change, emergency management and security.

[7] Preliminary data, taken during commissioning, demonstrated the versatility and capability of the imagery produced by Sentinel-1A even before the radar system is fully calibrated.

In 2014, data from the Sentinel-1A satellite in LEO was transmitted via an optical link to the Alphasat in GEO and then relayed to a ground station using a Ka band downlink.