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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.
Activity - Projects
Dragon 2 Cooperation Programme
The Dragon 2 Programme focussed on the exploitation of ESA, ESA's Third Party Missions and Chinese Earth observation data for science and applications development in land, ocean and atmospheric applications.
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.
Document - Technical Note
ESRIN-ERS-Central-Facility-GAP-Files-Interface-Specification.pdf
This document specifies the interface through which files of data related to the Global Activity Plan (GAP), stored in the ESRIN ERS Central Facility (EECF), are transmitted to the external entities. The EECF systems involved in this data exchange are the Interface Subset (ISS), responsible for telecommunication aspects and preprocessing, and the Central User Service (CUS), where the GAP resides.
Document - Technical Note
ERS-National-and-Foreign-Stations-Operators-Working-Group.pdf
This document presents material from the ERS National and Foreign Ground Station Operators Working Group Meeting, which took place in Toulouse, France, from 14 to 15 December 1995.
Instrument - Scatterometers
SAR (ERS)
The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument aboard ERS-1 and ERS-2 was capable of high precision change detection of surface heights.
Data - Data Description
ERS-2 SCATTEROMETER Surface Soil Moisture Time Series and Orbit product in High and Nominal Resolution [SSM.H/N.TS - SSM.H/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.
Document - General Reference
Land and Sea - ERS-1 Applications
The information sheets in this brochure describe just some of the many projects utilising data products and images from ERS-1.
Document - General Reference
ERS - Envisat Symposium - Looking down to Earth in the New Millennium
The abstracts from the ERS-Envisat Symposium "Looking down to Earth in the new Millennium", which took place in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 16 to 20 October 2000 are presented here.
Document - User Guide
Envisat Mission CFI Software PPF_Orbit Software User Manual
The Software User Manual (SUM) of the Envisat-1 mission CFI software is composed of a general document describing the sections common to all the CFI software libraries and a specific document for each of those libraries. This document is the PPF ORBIT Software User Manual. It provides a detailed description of the use of the CFI functions included within the PPF_ORBIT CFI software library.
Document - General Reference
2013 Dragon 3 Brochure
The 2013 Dragon 3 cooperation brochure presents the activities undertaken since the formal start of programme in June 2012.
Document - Proceedings
2004 Envisat and ERS Symposium
The 2004 Envisat and ERS Symposium was held in Salzburg - Austria from 6 to 10 September 2004. The 2004 Envisat and ERS Symposium provided a forum for investigators to present results of ongoing research project activities and assess the development of applications and services.
Document - General Reference
Earth from Space - 5 Years of Envisat
Since its launch in 2002, Envisat has provided continuous observation and monitoring of the Earth's land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps. The brochure represents, in a non-exhaustive way, some of the images and derived results provided by Envisat data over the last 5 years.