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  • All Categories (74)
  • Data (3)
  • News (13)
  • Missions (3)
  • Events (6)
  • Tools (2)
  • Activities (1)
  • Campaigns (14)
  • Documents (32)
  • News - General News

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    Go-to guide to Third Party Mission data offering

    ESA’s latest Third Party Missions Data Access Guide has been published, providing technical details and information on available data collections for all current or past Third Party Missions.

  • Event - Workshop

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    EO for Agriculture Under Pressure 2024

    EO for Agriculture Under Pressure 2024 Workshop follows up from previous events, bringing together the large community working on EO-based science and solutions for agriculture.

  • News - Data Release news

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    New FLEX-related campaign datasets released

    New datasets have been released for three campaigns, covering activities supporting the upcoming FLEX mission.

  • News - Thematic area articles

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    Space data support Earth’s ecosystems

    ESA’s Earth observation (EO) missions are making a critical contribution to monitoring transformations in our planet’s ecosystems, helping track changes in the vegetation, soil, and ocean that affect these systems.

  • Campaign

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    FLEXSense 2018

    The 2018 Fluorescence Explorer Sense (FLEXSense) campaign combined various field activities in preparation for the FLEX satellite mission.

  • Campaign

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    PhotoProxy 2019

    The Photosynthetic-Proxy Experiment campaign address relevant open aspects that are related to the quantitative assessment of vegetation photosynthesis and vegetation stress from space.

  • Campaign

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    FLEXSense 2019

    The FLEXSense 2019 campaign activities were undertaken in Germany and Italy with the goal of providing a complete set of high-resolution experimental data, including all relevant elements required for the preparation of the FLEX satellite mission.

  • News - Success Stories

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    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.

  • News - Thematic area articles

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    Global understanding of Earth's land surfaces greatly boosted by satellite data

    ESA perform land surface monitoring with a range of instruments onboard satellites acquiring optical and radar data. Collections of data from these missions are freely available for research purposes.

  • News - Thematic area articles

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    How satellite data help to shape society

    Data from ESA’s Earth observation archives are improving understanding of the interactions between human activities and the environment, helping to power green economic development and boosting prosperity in Europe and beyond.

  • Event - Training

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    EO Summer School 3

    ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.

  • News - Infographics

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    What are the next Earth Explorers?

    Learn about the planned missions in the Earth Explorers programme - EarthCARE, Biomass, FLEX, and FORUM - which will further our understanding of Earth’s climate.

  • News - Thematic area articles

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    How space data are transforming the global food system

    European Earth observation activities are accelerating a data-driven transformation in the agriculture sector that is helping farmers adapt to the dual challenges of climate change and population increase.

  • News - Data Release news

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    New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data now available

    Within ESA’s Landsat offering, access to the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data is now available.

  • News - Thematic area articles

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    Satellite data boost global understanding of land surface

    Understanding our changing land surface is essential in the study of climate change. Satellites are used to monitor changes to the material that covers Earth’s surface, so-called land cover, such as vegetation and water.

  • Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)

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    Landsat 8 Collection 2 European Coverage

    This dataset contains the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection 2 data, both Level-1 and Level-2, acquired since the beginning of the mission. Landsat-8 Collection 2 is the result of a reprocessing effort on the archive and on newly acquired products with significant improvement with respect to Collection 1 on data quality, obtained by means of advancements in data processing and algorithm development. Primarily, this involves a relevant improvement in the absolute geolocation accuracy (now re-baselined to the European Space Agency Copernicus Sentinel-2 Global Reference Image (GRI) but also includes updated digital elevation modelling sources, improved Radiometric Calibration (even correction for the TIRS striping effect), enhanced Quality Assessment Bands, updated and consistent metadata files and usage of Cloud Optimised Georeferenced (COG) Tagged Image File Format. Landsat-8 Level-1 products combine data from the two Landsat instruments, OLI and TIRS. The Level-1 products generated can be either L1TP or L1GT: L1TP - Level-1 Precision Terrain (Corrected) (L1T) products: Radiometrically calibrated and orthorectified using ground control points (GCPs) and digital elevation model (DEM) data to correct for relief displacement. The highest quality Level-1 products suitable for pixel-level time series analysis. GCPs used for L1TP correction are derived from the Global Land Survey 2000 (GLS2000) data set. L1GT - Level-1 Systematic Terrain (Corrected) (L1GT) products: L1GT data products consist of Level-0 product data with systematic radiometric, geometric and terrain corrections applied and resampled for registration to a cartographic projection, referenced to the WGS84, G873, or current version. The dissemination server contains three different classes of Level-1 products Real Time (RT): Newly acquired Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS data are processed upon downlink but use an initial TIRS line-of-sight model parameters; the data are made available in less than 12 hours (4-6 hours typically). Once the data have been reprocessed with the refined TIRS parameters, the products are transitioned to either Tier 1 or Tier 2 and removed from the Real-Time tier (in 14-16 days). Tier 1 (T1): Landsat scenes with the highest available data quality are placed into Tier 1 and are considered suitable for time-series analysis. Tier 1 includes Level-1 Precision and Terrain (L1TP) corrected data that have well-characterized radiometry and are inter-calibrated across the different Landsat instruments. The georegistration of Tier 1 scenes is consistent and within prescribed image-to-image tolerances of ≦ 12-metre radial root mean square error (RMSE). Tier 2 (T2): Landsat scenes not meeting Tier 1 criteria during processing are assigned to Tier 2. Tier 2 scenes adhere to the same radiometric standard as Tier 1 scenes, but do not meet the Tier 1 geometry specification due to less accurate orbital information (specific to older Landsat sensors), significant cloud cover, insufficient ground control, or other factors. This includes Systematic Terrain (L1GT) and Systematic (L1GS) processed data. Landsat-8 Level-2 products are generated from L1GT and L1TP Level-1 products that meet the <76 degrees Solar Zenith Angle constraint and include the required auxiliary data inputs to generate a scientifically viable product. The data are available a couple of days after the Level-1 T1/T2. The Level-2 products generated can be L2SP or L2SR: L2SP - Level-2 Science Products (L2SP) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), Surface Temperature (ST), ST intermediate bands, an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands. L2SR - Level-2 Surface Reflectance (L2SR) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands; it is generated if ST could not be generated. Two different categories of Level-1 products are offered: LC with Optical, Thermal and Quality Map images, LO with Optical and Quality Map images (Thermal not available). For the Level-2 data, only LC combined products are generated.

  • News - Data Release news

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    New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data available from January

    From the beginning of 2022, ESA will start the distribution of the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 products.

  • Event - Workshop

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    Space and the Arctic 2009 Workshop

    Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at an unprecedented rate. This workshop looked at the needs and challenges of working and living in the rapidly changing Arctic and explore how space-based services might help to meet those needs.

  • News - Infographics

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    An overview of ESA's Third Party Missions programme

    ESA’s Third Party Missions programme consists of almost 50 satellite missions, which are owned by organisations around the world. ESA has agreements with these organisations to acquire, process, and distribute data from their missions

  • Activity - General activities

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    EO Science for Society

    ESA's Earth Observation Science for Society programme aims to promote scientific exploitation of satellite data, forges new scientific discoveries and pioneers new services, stimulating downstream industrial and economic growth.