CoAuthors

Nicolas Picot (CNES, France); Henriette Skourup (DTU, Denmark); Geir Moholdt (NPI, Norway); Jean-Christophe Poisson (vorteX.io, France); Ole Andersen (DTU, Denmark); Laurent Arnaud (IGE, France); Jérémie Aublanc (CLS, France); Sajedeh Behnia (NPL, England); Etienne Berthier (LEGOS, France); Mathis Bertin (NOVELTIS, France); Denis Blumstein (CNES, France); Pascal Bonnefond (SYRTE, France); François Boy (SYRTE, France); Stéphane Calmant (IRD, France); Michel Calzas (DT-INSU, France); Stefania Camici (CNR-IRPI, Italy); Mathilde Cancet (NOVELTIS, France); Jean-François Cretaux (LEGOS, France); Vincent Favier (IGE, France); Roger Fjortoft (CNES, France); Sara Fleury (LEGOS, France); Mie Fredensborg Hansen Renée (DTU, Denmark); Benoit Laignel (M2C, France); Emmanuel Le Meur (IGE, France); Antonio Lourenco (LOCEAN, France); Jérôme Maxant (SERTIT/Connectus, France); Ashley Morris (NPI, Norway); Eric Munesa (NOVELTIS, France); Karina Nielsen (DTU, Denmark); Adrien Paris (Hydro Matters, France); Ghislain Picard (IGE, France); Antoine Rabatel (IGE, France); Nico Sneeuw (GIS (Univ. Stuttgar), Germany); Nicolas Taburet (CLS, France); Angelica Tarpanelli (CNR-IRPI, Italy); Mohammad Tourian (GIS (Univ. Stuttgar), Germany); Guillaume Valladeau (vorteX.io, France); Maxime Vayre (CLS, France); Frederic Vivier (LOCEAN, France); Emma Woolliams (NPL, England); Hervé Yesou (SERTIT/Connectus, France); Lionel Zawadzki (CNES, France); Pierre Féménias (ESA, Italy)

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 Surface Topography Mission (STM) provides extremely valuable surface elevation information over inland waters, sea ice and land ice, thanks to its SAR altimeter which retrieves high-resolution along-track elevation measurements, and to its orbit that covers high-latitude polar regions. To ensure that these measurements can be used with confidence, and to maximize the return on investment of the Copernicus Sentinel-3 STM, adequate validation of the geophysical retrieval methods, processing algorithms and corrections must be performed, considering independent observations as Reference Measurements.
St3TART is an EU and ESA funded project led by NOVELTIS with a consortium of 17 European partners (CNES, DTU, NPI, vorteX.io, LEGOS, Hydro Matters, CLS, LOCEAN, IGE, SERTIT, GIS, CNR-IRPI, NPL, DT/INSU, IRD, M2C, SYRTE). It aims to generalize the concept of Fiducial Reference Measurements (FRM) for the Copernicus Sentinel-3 STM and to collect and distribute FRM data for the validation of the satellite mission over inland waters, sea ice and land ice. The provision of FRM will serve the validation activities of the ESA S3 Land Altimetry products, currently performed by the Sentinel-3 Mission Performance Centre, with the support of the Sentinel-3 Validation Team, for the sake of performance assessment and fitness-for-purpose of the Sentinel-3 STM Land core products. Those products cover inland waters, land-ice and sea-ice areas.
The objective of the St3TART project is not only to collect existing data or measure new observations during field campaigns, but to ensure that these observations meet the criteria of FRM standards and can be used in an operational way for the validation of the Sentinel-3 Land topography mission.
The FRM Data Hub will provide a centralized access to these FRM measurements. It aims to federate the Cal/Val community in sharing these reference observations in a free and accessible manner, with fully characterized and documented FRM processing and measurements.
The poster will present the architecture of the tool, its interface, the first available datasets and the format specification.