- All Categories
- Data
- News
- Missions
- Events
- Tools
- Activities
- Instruments
- Campaigns
- Documents
News - Thematic area articles
Transforming space data into climate action
ESA’s Earth observation activities are playing a key role in the revitalised global drive to combat climate change.
News - Events and Proceedings
Data preservation takes centre stage at Living Planet Symposium
Against the backdrop of the famed Rhine River, world-class scientists and Earth observation data-users are gathered this week in the historical city of Bonn, at the Living Planet Symposium (LPS).
News - General News
Introducing Mirko Albani
In this short introduction, ESA's Heritage Missions Programme Manager describes what he likes most about ESA's long term archive of satellite mission data and his role in the programme.
News - Data Release news
New reprocessing of datasets celebrates 30 years of ERS
The ERS programme celebrated its 30th anniversary on 17 July. Today, we are still exploiting ERS data and experts continue to work on improving the altimeter, radiometer and SAR data the programme acquired.
News - Success Stories
ERS Heritage Data allow for 30 years of science
At their time of launch thirty years ago, the two ERS satellites were the most sophisticated Earth observation spacecraft ever developed and launched by Europe.
News - Infographics
ERS - ESA’s first Earth observation satellites
To mark the 30th anniversary of ERS, we've released a new infographic summarising the mission.
Tools - Apps
Heritage Missions app for iOS
Download the Heritage Missions application to discover what the missions were about, how it worked and what the elements of the space and ground segment that make these missions unique.
Tools - Apps
Heritage Missions app for Android
Download the Heritage Missions application to discover what the missions were about, how it worked and what the elements of the space and ground segment that make these missions unique.
Instrument - Imaging Spectrometers/Radiometers
MWR (ERS)
The microwave radiometer (MWR) instrument on board the ERS-1 and ERS-2 missions provided measurements of the integrated atmospheric water vapour column and cloud liquid water content.
Data - Data Description
ERS-1/2 SCATTEROMETER Ocean Wind field and Sea Ice probability [ASPS20.H/ASPS20.N]
Surface soil moisture records are derived from the backscatter coefficient measured by the Scatterometer on-board the European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS-2) using the Technische Universität (TU) Wien soil moisture retrieval algorithm called WARP (WAter Retrieval Package). In the WARP algorithm, the relative surface soil moisture estimates, given in degree of saturation Sd, range between 0% and 100% are derived by scaling the normalized backscatter between the lowest/highest backscatter values corresponding to the driest/wettest soil conditions. Surface Soil Moisture - Time Series product: The products generated are the surface soil moisture time series, where for each grid point defined in a DGG (Discrete Global Grid) is stored the time series of soil moisture and its noise, the surface state flag, the geolocation and the satellite parameters. The spatial resolution of the products is about 25 km x 25 km (high resolution) or 50 km x 50 km (nominal resolution) geo-referenced on the WARP grid. The location of the points can be viewed interactively with the tool DGG Point Locator. Surface Soil Moisture - Orbit product: In addition to WARP, a second software package, referred to as WARP orbit, was developed in response to the strong demand of soil moisture estimates in satellite orbit geometry. The Level 2 soil moisture orbit product contains a series of Level 1 data information, such as the backscatter, the incidence angle and the azimuth angle for each triplet together with the surface soil moisture and its noise, normalized backscatter at 40° incidence angle, parameters useful for soil moisture, the geolocation and the satellite parameters. The soil moisture orbit product is available in two spatial resolutions with different spatial sampling distances: Spatial sampling on a regular 12.5 km grid in orbit geometry with a spatial resolution of about 25 km x 25 km (high resolution) Spatial sampling on a regular 25 km grid in orbit geometry with a spatial resolution of about 50 km x 50 km (nominal resolution) The spatial resolution is defined by the Hamming window function, which is used for re-sample of raw backscatter measurements to the orbit grid in the Level-1 ground processor. Please consult the Product Quality Readme file before using the ERS-2 Surface Soil Moisture data.
Mission - Heritage Missions
ERS
The ERS programme was composed of two missions, ERS-1 and ERS-2, which together observed the Earth for 20 years, from 1991 to 2011.
Activity - Quality
SCIRoCCo
The SCIRoCCo project is an interdisciplinary cooperation of scatterometry experts aimed at promoting the continuing exploitation of ESA's unique 20 years' worth of ERS Scatterometer data.
News - Data Release news
ERS-1 Scatterometer L2 dataset processed with ASPS v10.04 is available online
The reprocessed dataset together with corresponding ERS-2 data is now available.
Event - Training
Advanced Training Course in Ocean Remote Sensing 2011
Within the framework of the Dragon Programme, a joint collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), ESA and NRSCC are providing a series of advanced thematic training courses on remote sensing applications hosted by university and research institutions in P.R. China.
Event - Conference
3rd ERS Symposium
The ESA Directorate for Observation of the Earth and its Environment held the 3rd ERS Symposium, in 1997, where many of the results from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 missions were presented and discussed by the scientific community.
Document - Newsletter
Earth-Online-Newsletter-8-July-2022.pdf
This issue of the Earth Online Newsletter covers a selection of the latest news and events from ESA.