After a trans-Atlantic journey on a cargo ship and a truck ride from Texas to California, the international sea level satellite Sentinel-6B arrived at a NASA facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Aug.18. Teams from the main mission partners, NASA and ESA (European Space Agency), as well as ESA’s prime contractor Airbus, will begin final preparations for the spacecraft’s launch this fall.
Sentinel-6B’s sea surface height measurements will provide crucial information to help improve coastal planning and enable local and state governments to make informed decisions about protecting coastal infrastructure, real estate, and energy sites. Those measurements will also help improve weather predictions critical to commercial and recreational navigation. In addition, data from Sentinel-6B will help decision-makers to better safeguard coastal military installations and provide crucial information about weather and ocean conditions to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Sentinel-6B satellite — packed into its white climate-controlled shipping container — rests on the deck of the Industrial Dolphin in a port in Germany. This cargo ship began its journey transporting the spacecraft from Europe to the United States in late July 2025.
NASA is targeting launch no earlier than November on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
The satellite is the second of two spacecraft that constitute the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission, a collaboration between NASA, the European Union, ESA, EUMETSAT (the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The European Commission provided funding support, and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales) contributed technical support.
Workers inside a clean room in Germany lowered a shipping container over the Sentinel-6B satellite in preparation for the spacecraft’s journey from Europe to its launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Sentinel-6B will take over from its twin, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, which launched from Vandenberg in November 2020. Both satellites are part of a long line of U.S.-European missions that have monitored global sea levels since 1992.
Sentinel-6B underwent final integration after the launch of Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich and then went into storage to await its 2025 launch. Crews took the Sentinel-6B satellite out of storage in late 2024 and ran it through tests and checks at a facility in Germany to ensure it was functioning properly. Teams then packed Sentinel-6B into a climate-controlled container for its journey to the United States, which began on July 22.
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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Southern California, is contributing three science instruments for each Sentinel-6 satellite: the Advanced Microwave Radiometer, the Global Navigation Satellite System - Radio Occultation, and the Laser Retroreflector Array. The agency is also contributing launch services, ground systems supporting operation of the NASA science instruments, the science data processors for two of these instruments, and support for the international ocean surface topography community.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the launch service for the mission.