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  • Events (9)
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  • Documents (35)
  • Document - Newsletter

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    Earth Online Newsletter - 22 March 2024

    This issue of the Earth Online Newsletter covers a selection of the latest news and events from ESA.

  • 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.

  • 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 - Success Stories

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    New worldwide dataset captures the planet in fine detail

    Scientists have developed an open source planetwide dataset of high-resolution Earth observation imagery, thanks to commercial data delivered by ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme.

  • 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 - 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.

  • 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.

  • Event - Workshop

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    Fringe 2003 Workshop

    The third ESA International Workshop on ERS SAR Interferometry and its first Workshop on ASAR interferometry: Advances in SAR interferometry from ERS and Envisat missions.

  • 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

  • News - Events and Proceedings

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    Φ-Week Triumphs

    In its fourth edition, Φ-Week presented the scientific community with amazing opportunities and projects—thus running alongside innovation at 360 degrees.

  • Data - Project Proposal (Restrained)

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    SPOT-6 to 7 full archive and tasking

    The SPOT 6 and 7 satellites ensure data continuity with the no longer operational SPOT 5 satellite and provide an archive of very high resolution optical acquisition as well as the possibility to task the satellites for new acquisitions. Following the completion of the SPOT 7 mission in March 2023, new acquisition tasking is only available for the SPOT 6 satellite. The ortho-products are automatically generated by the SPOT 6 and 7 ground segment, based on SRTM database or Reference3D when available. The projection available for SPOT 6 and 7 ortho-products is UTM, datum WGS84. Bands combinations: Pansharpened: colour image at 1.5 m resolution Bundle: 1.5 m panchromatic image and 6 m multispectral image. Geometric processing levels: Primary: The Primary product is the processing level closest to the natural image acquired by the sensor. This product restores perfect collection conditions: the sensor is placed in rectilinear geometry, and the image is clear of all radiometric distortion. Standard Ortho: The Ortho product is a georeferenced image in Earth geometry, corrected from acquisition and terrain off-nadir effects. Tailored ortho: Aside from the Standard Ortho product, when different specifications are needed, a custom orthorectification, with a more precise 3D model provided by the client or acquired for the purpose, can be provided on demand. As per ESA policy, very high-resolution imagery of conflict areas cannot be provided.

  • Tools - Other

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    Hydrology TEP

    The Hydrology Thematic Exploitation Platform (TEP) enables access, processing, uploading, visualisation, manipulation and comparison of hydrological data.

  • Tools - Other

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    Forestry TEP

    The Forestry Thematic Exploitation Platform (TEP) enables users in the forestry sector to access satellite data based processing services and tools for generating value-added forest information products.

  • Event - Training

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    4th Advanced Training Course in Land Remote Sensing

    ESA organised the 4th Advanced Training Course in Land Remote Sensing which took place in Athens, Greece from 1 to 5 July 2013

  • Data - Data Description

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    SPOT 6 and 7 ESA archive

    The SPOT 6 and 7 ESA archive is a dataset of SPOT 6 and SPOT 7 products that ESA collected over the years. The dataset regularly grows as ESA collects new SPOT 6 and 7 products. SPOT 6 and 7 Primary and Ortho products can be available in the following modes: Panchromatic image at 1.5m resolution Pansharpened colour image at 1.5m resolution Multispectral image in 4 spectral bands at 6m resolution Bundle (1.5m panchromatic image + 6m multispectral image) Spatial coverage: Check the spatial coverage of the collection on a map available on the Third Party Missions Dissemination Service. As per ESA policy, very high-resolution imagery of conflict areas cannot be provided.

  • Data - Data Description

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    TerraSAR-X ESA archive

    The TerraSAR-X ESA archive collection consists of TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X products requested by ESA supported projects over their areas of interest around the world. The dataset regularly grows as ESA collects new products over the years. TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X Image Products can be acquired in 6 image modes with flexible resolutions (from 0.25m to 40m) and scene sizes. Thanks to different polarimetric combinations and processing levels the delivered imagery can be tailored specifically to meet the requirements of the application. The following list delineates the characteristics of the SAR imaging modes that are disseminated under ESA Third Party Missions (TPM). StripMap (SM): Resolution 3 m, Scene size 30x50 km2 (up to 30x1650 km2) SpotLight (SL): Resolution 2 m, Scene size 10x10 km2 Staring SpotLight (ST): Resolution 0.25m, Scene size 4x3.7 km2 High Resolution SpotLight (HS): Resolution 1 m, Scene size 10x5 km2 ScanSAR (SC): Resolution 18 m, Scene size 100x150 km2 (up to 100x1650 km2) Wide ScanSAR (WS): Resolution 40 m, Scene size 270x200 km2 (up to 270x1500 km2) The following list briefly delineates the available processing levels for the TerraSAR-X dataset: SSC (Single Look Slant Range Complex) in DLR-defined COSAR binary format MGD (Multi Look Ground Range Detected) in GeoTiff format • GEC (Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected) in GeoTiff format EEC (Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected in GeoTiff format Spatial coverage: Check the spatial coverage of the collection on a map available on the Third Party Missions Dissemination Service. As per ESA policy, very high-resolution data over conflict areas cannot be provided.