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Poseidon-4 SAR Altimeter

Missions → Sentinel-6B (Commissioning) , Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich (Operational)

Ku/C-band nadir-pointing SAR radar altimeter for Sentinel-6 sea-surface height and inland-water measurements.

Poseidon-4 is the primary nadir-pointing dual-frequency SAR radar altimeter for the Copernicus Sentinel-6 mission.^[1]^[2]^[3] It flies on Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich and Sentinel-6B, with WMO listing Sentinel-6A for 2021-2027 service and Sentinel-6B for 2026-2032 service.^[3] The main surface-height channel is Ku band at 13.575 GHz with 320 MHz bandwidth, paired with a 5.41 GHz C-band channel with 320 MHz bandwidth for dual-frequency ionospheric correction.^[1]^[3] Poseidon-4 uses interleaved operation to collect SAR high-resolution and pulse-limited low-resolution measurements, maintaining continuity with Jason-series altimetry while improving Sentinel-6 measurement detail.^[2]^[3] Its supported measurements include sea-surface height, significant wave height, wind speed, ice topography, and ionospheric correction support from the second frequency.^[1]^[3]^[2]

Operator pricing

Pricing not publicly listed by operator

Supply chain position

carried by Sentinel-6B

carried by Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich

Sources

[1]Sentinel-6 instrument payload, Copernicus Sentinel Onlineagency doc2026-06-16
[2]How Sentinel-6 Poseidon-4 works, ESAagency doc2026-06-16
[3]WMO OSCAR instrument record: Poseidon-4agency doc2026-06-16

Cite https://eo-atlas.org/products/component/poseidon-4 Markdown twin → Field definitions → Suggest a correction →

How to cite this page

Plain text

Poseidon-4 SAR Altimeter. EO-Atlas, SpectraWorks B.V. https://eo-atlas.org/products/component/poseidon-4 (CC BY 4.0)

BibTeX

@misc{eoatlas:products:component:poseidon-4,
  title = {Poseidon-4 SAR Altimeter},
  author = {{EO-Atlas}},
  publisher = {SpectraWorks B.V.},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
  url = {https://eo-atlas.org/products/component/poseidon-4}
}