SPOT

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Cloud-free collections key for land monitoring

Satellite imagery is a crucially important tool for monitoring the land, but cloud cover can often block parts of Earth’s surface from view, limiting subsequent analyses.

Commercial and international data for fire monitoring

As climate change sparks a surge in the frequency and intensity of wildfires, satellite data disseminated through ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme are helping scientists to track and investigate these potentially damaging natural events.

How satellite data empower sustainable urban growth

Earth observation is a vital tool for facilitating the sustainable development of the world's cities, helping to ensure that urban centres keep spurring collaboration, innovation and opportunity as they continue to expand.

PROBA-V data improve surface albedo products in Africa

As ESA’s PROBA-V satellite marks its 10-year launch milestone, data tasked during the mission’s lifetime are still being used to assess changes in land cover.

International collaboration: Summarising ESA’s Third Party Missions

ESA’s Third Party Missions programme consists of more than 50 missions from around the world. Learn more about the Third Party Missions in this video.

About SPOT Series

The SPOT (from French "Satellite pour l'Observation de la Terre") series has been supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery since 1986. Conceived by the French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), five satellites were launched between 1986 and 2015, and in revealing Earth’s surface in detail they led to new applications in mapping, vegetation monitoring, land use and land cover, and the impacts of natural disasters.

The latest satellites in the series, SPOT 6 and SPOT 7, are commercial satellites owned by Airbus Defence and Space, and assure data continuity through to 2024.

All of the SPOT satellites provide imagery in panchromatic and multispectral bands with a swath of 60 km.

The SPOT series is part of ESA's Third Party Missions Programme, in which ESA has an agreement with Airbus Defence and Space to distribute data products from the mission.

SPOT Series Objectives

The goal of the SPOT series is to improve the knowledge and management of Earth by exploring the planet's resources, detecting and forecasting phenomena involving climatology and oceanography, and monitoring human activities and natural phenomena.