These missions are typically operating at visible, near-infrared and short-wave infrared wavelength (sometimes with a panchromatic channel at higher resolution), and imaging is therefore dependent from solar illumination and weather conditions.
They provide high-to very high spatial resolution images (i.e. from few tens of meters to few tens of centimeters), with high image location accuracy. They typically do not have global imaging capacity, and acquisition is accomplished over tasked areas.
Depending on the spectral coverage, these missions can serve very different applications, including:
Land applications have used data of this kind for decades, primarily from the Landsat and SPOT series, continuously improving the quality and quantity of the derived information.
Explicitly designed for fulfilling these GMES needs, the Sentinel-2 mission will embark a high-resolution sensor that systematically acquire over the whole globe.