Document - Newsletter

Earth Online Newsletter - 08 March 2024

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

News - Data Release news

FDR4ALT - ESA unveils new cutting-edge ERS/Envisat Altimeter and Microwave Radiometer Datasets

The European Space Agency (ESA) has developed a comprehensive suite of innovative Earth system data records as part of the Fundamental Data Records for Altimetry project - FDR4ALT.

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 - 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.

Data - Fast Registration with approval (Restrained)

SPOT 1-5 ESA archive

The ESA SPOT 1-5 collection is a dataset of SPOT 1 to 5 Panchromatic and Multispectral products that ESA collected over the years. The HRV(IR) sensor onboard SPOT 1-4 provides data at 10 m spatial resolution Panchromatic mode (-1 band) and 20 m (Multispectral mode -3 or 4 bands). The HRG sensor on board of SPOT-5 provides spatial resolution of the imagery to < 3 m in the panchromatic band and to 10 m in the multispectral mode (3 bands). The SWIR band imagery remains at 20 m. The dataset mainly focuses on European and African sites but some American, Asian and Greenland areas are also covered. Spatial coverage: Check the spatial coverage of the collection on a map available on the Third Party Missions Dissemination Service. The SPOT Collection

Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)

SPOT 4-5 Take5 ESA archive

At the end of SPOT-4 mission, the Take5 experiment was launched and the satellite was moved to a lower orbit to obtain a 5 day repeat cycle, same repetition of Sentinel-2. Thanks to this orbit, from 1 February to 19 June 2013 a time series of images acquired every 5 days with constant angle and over 45 different sites were observed. In analogy to the previous SPOT-4 Take-5 experiment, also SPOT-5 was placed in a 5 days cycle orbit and 145 selected sites were acquired every 5 days under constant angles from 8 April to 31 August 2015. With a resolution of 10 m, the following processing levels are available: Level 1A: reflectance at the top of atmosphere (TOA), not orthorectified products Level 1C: data orthorectified reflectance at the top of atmosphere (TOA) Level 2A: data orthorectified surface reflectance after atmospheric correction (BOA), along with clouds mask and their shadow, and mask of water and snow. Spatial coverage: Check the spatial coverage of the collection on a map available on the Third Party Missions Dissemination Service.

Data - Fast Registration with approval (Restrained)

Image 2006 European coverage

The Image 2006 collection is a SPOT-4, SPOT-5 and ResourceSat-1 (also known as IRS-P6) cloud free coverage over 38 European countries in 2006 (from February 2005 to November 2007). The Level 1 data provided in this collection originate from the SPOT-4 HRVIR instrument (with 20 m spatial resolution), from SPOT-5 HRG (with 10 m spatial resolution resampled to 20 m) and IRS-P6 LISS III (with 23 m spatial resolution), each with four spectral bands. The swath is of about 60 km for the SPOT satellites and 140 km for the IRS-P6 satellite. In addition to the Level 1, the collection provides the same data geometrically corrected towards a European Map Projection with 25 m resolution. Spatial coverage: Check the spatial coverage of the collection on a map available on the Third Party Missions Dissemination Service.

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.

Mission - Heritage Missions

SPOT

The SPOT (from French "Satellite pour l'Observation de la Terre") series of missions has been supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery since 1986.

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 - Proceedings

ERS-Envisat Symposium

Mission - Heritage Missions

SPOT 4

SPOT 4, like all the SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.

Event - Training

Advanced Training Course in Land Remote Sensing 2012

The 2012 advanced training course focused on land remote sensing theory and applications.

Event - Training

3rd Advanced Training Course on Land Remote Sensing 2011

This 2011 advanced ESA training course focused on land remote sensing theory and applications.