The Copernicus programme, jointly managed by the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA), constitutes one of the most important civilian space infrastructures in the world. Despite the extensive capabilities of the existing Sentinel missions, an analysis of user needs identified six areas where current satellite technologies are insufficient. In response, ESA launched the development of six Copernicus Sentinel Expansion Missions in 2020, with a total contract value of 2.55 billion EUR. This thesis provides a comprehensive overview of all six expansion missions: CHIME, CIMR, CRISTAL, CO2M, LSTM and ROSE-L. For each mission, the primary objectives, technical instrument specifications and potential applications in Slovenia are presented. The thesis is based on a review of official technical documentation from ESA, EU and international space organisations. The findings show that each of the six missions addresses a specific gap in the existing Copernicus system. CHIME will significantly improve monitoring of vegetation, soils and minerals with more than 200 hyperspectral bands. CIMR will provide sub-daily coverage of polar regions with the widest swath width (1,900 km) among the six missions. CRISTAL will for the first time enable direct separation of snow and ice thickness on sea ice. CO2M will track anthropogenic CO2 and CH4 emissions with high spatial resolution. LSTM will enable evapotranspiration measurements at the level of individual agricultural fields with a spatial resolution of 50 m. ROSE-L will use an L-band SAR radar to penetrate through vegetation for monitoring of forest biomass, soil moisture and terrain displacement. For Slovenia, data from all six missions are particularly relevant in the fields of agriculture, forestry, climate change and water resource management.
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