News - Thematic area articles

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.

Data - Data Description

Landsat 5 TM European and Mediterranean Countries Cloud Free Collection

This dataset contains the cloud-free products from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper collection acquired over Europe, North Africa and middle East; for each scene only one product is selected, with the minimal cloud coverage. The acquired Landsat TM scene covers approximately 183 x 172.8 km. A standard full scene is nominally centred on the intersection between a path and row (the actual image centre can vary by up to 100 m). The data are system corrected.

News - Data Release news

Full European Landsat data collection now available under the same catalogue

The Full European Landsat data collection, from Landsat-1 to Landsat-8, is now available under the same catalogue

Event - Training

EO Summer School 5

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

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

Interviewing Mirko Albani

ESA’s Heritage Space Programme Manager describes the goals of the programme, some of the challenges involved in preserving and improving 40 years of historical Earth observation data, and his passion for curating this long-term archive.

News - Success Stories

How Envisat helped to shape global understanding of Earth’s systems

Twenty years have passed since a ground-breaking European spacecraft designed to deliver unprecedented insight into the planet’s changing environment was lofted into orbit.

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.

Data - Data Description

Landsat TM ESA archive

This dataset contains all the Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper high-quality ortho-rectified L1T dataset acquired by ESA over the Fucino, Matera, Kiruna and Maspalomas visibility masks, as well as campaign data over Malindi, Bishkek, Chetumal, and Libreville. The acquired Landsat TM scene covers approximately 183 x 172.8 km. A standard full scene is nominally centred on the intersection between a path and row (the actual image centre can vary by up to 100 m). A full image is composed of 6920 pixels x 5760 lines and each band requires 40 MB of storage space (uncompressed) at 30 m spatial resolution in the VIS, NIR and SWIR as well as 120 m in the TIR spectral range. Kiruna Landsat TM GTC density map Maspalomas Landsat TM GTC density map Matera Landsat TM GTC density map

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.

News - Data Release news

New reprocessed Landsat data on a new dissemination server

The full ESA Landsat archive has been reprocessed with the latest version of the processor to provide a homogenous dataset covering MSS, TM and ETM+ data.

News - Infographics

Envisat - ESA's versatile Earth observation satellite

Learn more about ESA's Envisat mission - the largest Earth observation satellite ever built - in a new infographic.

Document - Technical Note

Landsat 7 ETM Image Assessment System Radiometric Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document

Document - Technical Note

Landsat 7 ETM Image Assessment System Geometric Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document

Data - Announcement of Opportunity

Announcement of Opportunity for G-POD

ESA is offering all scientists the possibility to perform bulk processing and/or validation of their own algorithms exploiting the large ESA Earth-observation archive.

Data - Data Description

Envisat MERIS Full Resolution - Level 1 [MER_FRS_1P/ME_1_FRG]

The MERIS Level 1 Full Resolution (FR) product contains the Top of Atmosphere (TOA) upwelling spectral radiance measurements. The in-band reference irradiances for the 15 MERIS bands are computed by averaging the in-band solar irradiance of each pixel. The in-band solar irradiance of each pixel is computed by integrating the reference solar spectrum with the band-pass of each pixel. The MERIS FR Level 1 product has Sentinel 3-like format starting from the 4th reprocessing data released to users in July 2020. Each measurement and annotation data file is in NetCDF 4. The Level 1 product is composed of 22 data files: 15 files containing radiances at each band (one band per file), accompanied by the associated error estimates, and 7 annotation data files. The 15 sun spectral flux values provided in the instrument data file of the Level 1 products are the in-band reference irradiances adjusted for the Earth-sun distance at the time of measurement. The band-pass of each pixel is derived from on-ground and in-flight characterisation via an instrument model. The values "Band wavelength" and "Bandwidth" provided in the Manifest file of the Level 1b products are the averaged band-pass of each pixel over the instrument field of view. Auxiliary data are also listed in the Manifest file associated to each product. The Level 1 FR product covers the complete instrument swath. The product duration is not fixed and it can span up to the time interval of the input Level 0 (for a maximum of 20 minutes). Thus the estimated size of the Level 1 FR is dependent on the start/stop time of the acquired segment. During the Envisat mission, acquisition of MERIS Full Resolution data was subject to dedicated planning based on on-demand ordering and coverage of specific areas according to operational recommendations and considerations. See yearly and global density maps to get a better overview of the MERIS FR coverage.

Data - Data Description

Envisat MERIS Full Resolution - Level 2 [MER_FRS_2P/ME_2_FRG]

MERIS FR Level 2 is a Full-Resolution Geophysical product for Ocean, Land and Atmosphere. Each MERIS Level 2 geophysical product is derived from a MERIS Level 1 product and auxiliary parameter files specific to the MERIS Level 2 processing. The MERIS FR Level 2 product has Sentinel 3-like format starting from the 4th reprocessing data released to users in July 2020. The data package is composed of NetCDF 4 files containing instrumental and scientific measurements, and a Manifest file which contains metadata information related to the description of the product. A Level 2 product is composed of 64 measurement files containing: 13 files containing Water-leaving reflectance, 13 files containing Land surface reflectance and 13 files containing the TOA reflectance (for all bands except those dedicated to measurement of atmospheric gas - M11 and M15), and several files containing additional measurements on Ocean, Land and Atmospheric parameters and annotation. The Auxiliary data used are listed in the Manifest file associated to each product. The Level 2 FR product covers the complete instrument swath. The product duration is not fixed and it can span up to the time interval of the input Level 0/Level 1. Thus the estimated size of the Level 2 FR is dependent on the start/stop time of the acquired segment. During the Envisat mission, acquisition of MERIS Full Resolution data was subject to dedicated planning based on on-demand ordering and coverage of specific areas according to operational recommendations and considerations. See yearly and global density maps to get a better overview of the MERIS FR coverage.

Mission - Heritage Missions

Envisat

Envisat was ESA's successor to ERS. Envisat carried ten instruments aboard for a wide range of Earth observing fields. The mission was operational from 2002 to 2012.

Campaign

SEN3EXP

The main objective of Sen3Exp (Sentinel-3 Experimental Campaign) was to provide a comprehensive dataset that covers all Sentinel-3 OLCI and SLSTR bands that is to be used for the algorithm prototype and ground segment processor development.