OREANDA-NEWS. September 17, 2008. The new name of the European GMES Programme (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) has been unveiled: Kopernikus. The European Commission Vice President Gunter Verheugen announced the name at the GMES 2008 Lille forum.

As the 15th century scientist Copernicus revolutionized the understanding of our Universe, Kopernikus brings the Earth back to the `centre` of our concerns and will help us care for a better and safer world.

The GMES programme has been set up to provide services relating to the environment, climate change, resource management and global issues. These services draw on data - mainly Earth observation data - from satellites and in-situ measurements, combined with socio-economic data, processed in such a way as to readily generate usable information for all citizens in Europe on a sustained basis. In addition, spacecraft involved in GMES can provide security data.
  
GMES is an initiative of the European Commission, which is responsible for setting the requirements and identifying the services to be offered. ESA is in charge of the development and procurement of dedicated GMES satellites and for the coordination of space assets provided by European national operators and EUMETSAT.

Among the satellites are ESA Member States’ missions, such as France’s Spot and Pleiades satellites, Germany’s TerraSAR-X, Italy’s CosmoSkyMed, the UK-led DMC constellation (including the soon-to-be launched DMC-UK2 and Spain’s Deimos-1), as well as Canada’s Radarsat, Israel’s EROS and other non-European missions distributed through European companies. In addition, ESA will act as data provider for its own Earth Observation (EO) missions, such as Envisat and ERS-2, as well as its Third Party Missions.

The fleet of GMES contributing missions is constantly increasing. On August 29, 2008, Russian RS-20 launcher lofted German 5-satellite RapidEye constellation from Russian Baikonur space port.