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  • 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.

  • Tools - Visualisation

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    PROBA-V Mission Exploitation Platform (MEP)

    The MEP PROBA-V addresses a broad vegetation user community with the final aim to ease and increase the use of PROBA-V data by any user.

  • News - General News

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    PROBA-V’s companion explores low-cost remote sensing

    With the launch of PROBA-V’s Companion CubeSat (PV-CC), ESA supports a future where clusters of cheaper, small satellites could complement full-scale missions for Earth observation.

  • 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 - Spotlight on EO community

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    Meet one of ESA's first Africa Programme Research Fellows

    Research Fellow, Dr Gladys Mosomtai, from the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe), works on applying Earth observation data to better understand the spread of infectious disease in livestock, in Kenya.

  • News - Success Stories

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    PROBA-V data improve surface albedo products in Africa

    As ESA’s PROBA-V satellite marks its 10-year launch milestone, data tasked during the mission’s lifetime are still being used to assess changes in land cover.

  • Event - Meeting

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    PROBA-V QWG meeting 16

    The Proba-V QWG meeting 16 – Hybrid Event: VITO (Mol) and Microsoft Teams held on 22-23 March 2023

  • News - Data Release news

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    PROBA-V ‘Collection 2’ - Reprocessed Dataset available

    The improved PROBA-V data (Collection 2) has been released. Data is available via the PROBA-V MEP and Terrascope platforms so users can freely exploit the data using Virtual machines, Jupyter Notebooks, and the new viewing application.

  • 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.

  • Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)

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    PAZ ESA archive

    The PAZ ESA archive collection consists of PAZ Level 1 data previously requested by ESA supported projects over their areas of interest around the world and, as a consequence, the products are scattered and dispersed worldwide and in different time windows. The dataset regularly grows as ESA collects new products over the years. Available modes are: StripMap mode (SM): SSD less than 3 m for a scene 30 km x 50 km in single polarization or 15 km x 50 km in dual polarisation ScanSAR mode (SC): the scene is 100 x 150 km2, SSD less than 18 m in signle pol only Wide ScanSAR mode (WS): single polarisation only, with SS less than 40 m and scene size of 270 x 200 km2 Spotlight modes (SL): SSD less than 2 m for a scene 10 km x 10 km, both single and dual polarization are available High Resolution Spotlight mode (HS): in both single and dual polarisation, the scene is 10x5 km2, SSD less than 1 m Staring Spotlight mode (ST): SSD is 25 cm, the scene size is 4 x 4 km2, in single polarisation only. The available geometric projections are: Single Look Slant Range Complex (SSC): single look product, no geocoding, no radiometric artifact included, the pixel spacing is equidistant in azimuth and in ground range Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD): detected multi look product, simple polynomial slant-to-ground projection is performed in range, no image rotation to a map coordinate system is performed Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC): multi look detected product, projected and re-sampled to the WGS84 reference ellipsoid with no terrain corrections Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected (EEC): multi look detected product, projected and re-sampled to the WGS84 reference ellipsoid, the image distortions caused by varying terrain height are corrected using a DEM. The following table summarises the offered product types. EO-SIP product type Operation Mode Geometric Projection Geometric Projection PSP_SM_SSC Stripmap (SM) Single Look Slant Range Complex (SSC) PSP_SM_MGD Stripmap (SM) Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD) PSP_SM_GEC Stripmap (SM) Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC) PSP_SM_EEC Stripmap (SM) Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected (EEC) PSP_SC_MGD ScanSAR (SC) Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD) PSP_SC_GEC ScanSAR (SC) Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD) PSP_SC_EEC ScanSAR (SC) Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC) PSP_SC_SSC ScanSAR (SC) Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected (EEC) PSP_SL_SSC Spotlight (SL) Single Look Slant Range Complex (SSC) PSP_SL_MGD Spotlight (SL) Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD) PSP_SL_GEC Spotlight (SL) Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC) PSP_SL_EEC Spotlight (SL) Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected (EEC) PSP_HS_SSC High Resolution Spotlight (HS) Single Look Slant Range Complex (SSC) PSP_HS_MGD High Resolution Spotlight (HS) Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD) PSP_HS_GEC High Resolution Spotlight (HS) Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC) PSP_HS_EEC High Resolution Spotlight (HS) Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected (EEC) PSP_ST_SSC Staring Spotlight (ST) Single Look Slant Range Complex (SSC) PSP_ST_MGD Staring Spotlight (ST) Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD) PSP_ST_GEC Staring Spotlight (ST) Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC) PSP_ST_EEC Staring Spotlight (ST) Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected (EEC) PSP_WS_SSC Wide ScanSAR (WS) Single Look Slant Range Complex (SSC) PSP_WS_MGD Wide ScanSAR (WS) Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD) PSP_WS_GEC Wide ScanSAR (WS) Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC) PSP_WS_EEC Wide ScanSAR (WS) Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected (EEC) As per ESA policy, very high-resolution data over conflict areas cannot be provided.

  • Event - Training

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    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.

  • Event - Meeting

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    PROBA-V QWG meeting 15

    The Proba-V QWG meeting 15 - Hybrid Event: University of Valencia and Microsoft Teams held on 09-10 June 2022

  • News - Thematic area articles

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    Satellite data boost global understanding of land surface

    Understanding our changing land surface is essential in the study of climate change. Satellites are used to monitor changes to the material that covers Earth’s surface, so-called land cover, such as vegetation and water.

  • Event - Meeting

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    PROBA-V QWG meeting 13

    The status of the mission was recalled: Experimental Phase is running since July 2020 with the perspective to prepare the ground for the launch and exploitation of PV-CC mission. The latest delay in the schedule of the PV-CC launch (currently Q1/Q2 2022) changed the approach for exploitation, notably owing to the degrading Proba-V illumination conditions at the time of the launch. On the processing side, the main priority is to finalize the verification phase for the C2 and start the full mission reprocessing.

  • News - Success Stories

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    1 km resolution aerosol optical thickness retrieved from PROBA-V

    The ESA SPAR@MEP project aims to deliver a long-term data record (LTDR) of aerosol optical properties and surface reflectance from SPOT-VGT and PROBA-V observations.

  • Event - Meeting

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    PROBA-V QWG meeting 12

    The main discussion points for the QWG meeting #12 are recalled: 1. Mission Status: the operational phase was discontinued on 30 June 2020 to limit the impact of the orbital drift and the new experimental phase started on 1st July 2020 with focus on acquiring data over Africa and Europe together with ad-hoc acquisition campaigns. Flight and Ground Segment overall performances are excellent with no sign of degradation.

  • News - Operational News

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    New experimental phase for PROBA-V

    PROBA-V has begun a new experimental phase that will continue through to October 2021.

  • Event - Meeting

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    PROBA-V QWG meeting 11

    The PROBA-V QWG meeting 11 took place from 25 to 26 June 2020.

  • Data - Project Proposal (Restrained)

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    PAZ Full Archive and New Tasking

    PAZ Image Products can be acquired in eight image modes with flexible resolutions (from 1 m to 40 m) 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. Available modes are: StripMap mode (SM): in single and dual polarisation: The ground swath is illuminated with a continuous train of pulses while the antenna beam is pointed to a fixed angle, both in elevation and in azimuth. ScanSAR mode (SC): in single polarisation: the swath width is increased in respect to the StripMap mode, it is composed of four different sub-swaths, which are obtained by antenna steering in elevation direction Wide ScanSAR mode (WS), in single polarisation: the usage of six sub-swaths allows to obtain a higher swath coverage product Spotlight modes: in single and dual polarisation: Spotlight modes take advantage of the beam steering capability in the azimuth plane to illuminate for a longer time the area of interest: a sensible improvement of the azimuth resolution is achieved at the expense of a shorter scene size. Spotlight mode (SL) is designed to maximise the azimuth scene extension at the expense of the spatial resolution, and High Resolution Spotlight mode (HS) is designed to maximize the spatial resolutions at the expense of the scene extension. Staring Spotlight mode (ST), in single polarisation: The virtual rotation point coincides with the center of the beam: the image length in the flight direction is constrained by the projection on-ground of the azimuth beamwidth and it leads to a target azimuth illumination time increment and to achieve the best azimuth resolution. There are two main classes of products: Spatially Enhanced products (SE): Designed with the target of maximize the spatial resolution in pixels with squared size, so the larger resolution value of azimuth or ground range determines the square pixel size, and the smaller resolution value is adjusted to this size and the corresponding reduction of the bandwidth is used for speckle reduction. Radiometrically Enhanced products (RE): Designed with the target of maximize the radiometry, so the range and azimuth resolutions are intentionally decreased to significantly reduce speckle by averaging several looks. The following geometric projections are offered: Single Look Slant Range Complex (SSC): Single look product of the focused radar signal: the pixels are spaced equidistant in azimuth and in slant range. No geocoding is available, no radiometric artifacts included. Product delivered in the DLR-defined binary COSAR format. The SSC product is intended for applications that require the full bandwidth and phase information, e.g. for SAR interferometry and polarimetry. Multi Look Ground Range Detected (MGD): Detected multi look product in GeoTiff format with reduced speckle and approximately square resolution cells on ground. The image coordinates are oriented along flight direction and along ground range; the pixel spacing is equidistant in azimuth and in ground range. A simple polynomial slant to ground projection is performed in range using a WGS84 ellipsoid and an average, constant terrain height parameter. No image rotation to a map coordinate system is performed and interpolation artifacts are thus avoided. Geocoded Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC): Multi look detected product in GeoTiff format. It is projected and re-sampled to the WGS84 reference ellipsoid assuming one average terrain height. No terrain correction performed. UTM is the standard projection, for polar regions UPS is applied. Enhanced Ellipsoid Corrected (EEC): Multi look detected product in GeoTiff format. It is projected and re-sampled to the WGS84 reference ellipsoid. The image distortions caused by varying terrain height are corrected using an external DEM; therefore the pixel localization in these products is highly accurate. UTM is the standard projection, for polar regions UPS is applied. StripMap Single StripMap Dual ScanSAR Wide ScanSAR Spotlight Single Spotlight Dual HR Spotlight Single HR Spotlight Dual Staring Spotlight Mode ID SM-S SM-D SC WS SL-S SL-D HS-S HS-D ST Polarizations HH, VV, HV, VH HH/VV, HH/HV, VV/VH HH, VV, HV, VH HH, VV, HV, VH HH, VV, HV, VH HH/VV, HH/HV, VV/VH HH, VV, HV, VH HH/VV, HH/HV, VV/VH HH, VV, HV, VH Scene size (Range x Azimuth) [km] 30 x 50 15 x 50 100 x 150 [273-196] x 208 10 x 10 10 x 10 10-6 x 5 (depending on incident angle) 10 x 5 [9-4.6] x [2.7-3.6] Range Resolution [m] MGD, GEC, EEC (SE)[Ground range] 2.99 - 3.52 at (45° - 20°) 6 N/A N/A 1.55 - 3.43 at (55° - 20°) 3.09 - 3.5 at (55° - 20°) 1 - 1.76 at (55° - 20°) 2 - 3.5 at (55° - 20°) 0.96 -1.78 at (45°- 20°) MGD, GEC, EEC (RE) [Ground range] 6.53 - 7.65 at (45° - 20°) 7.51 - 10.43 at (45° - 20°) 16.79 - 18.19 at (45° - 20°) 35 3.51 - 5.43 at (55° - 20°) 4.98 - 7.63 at (55° - 20°) 2.83 - 3.11 at (55° - 20°) 4 - 6.2 at (55° - 20°) 0.97 - 1.78 at (45°-20°) SSC[Slant range] 1.1 (150 MHz bandwidth) 1.7 (100 MHz bandwidth) 1.18 1.17 - 3.4 (depending on range bandwidth) 1.75 - 3.18 (depending on range bandwidth) 1.18 1.17 0.6 1.17 0.59 Azimuth Resolution [m] MGD, GEC, EEC (SE) 3.05 6.11 N/A N/A 1.56 - 2.9 at (55° - 20°) 3.53 1 - 1.49 at (55 °- 20°) 2.38 - 2.93 at (55° - 20°) 0.38 - 0.7 at (45°-20°) MGD, GEC, EEC (RE) 6.53 - 7.60 at (45° - 20°) 7.52 - 10.4 at (45° - 20°) 17.66 - 18.18 at (45° - 20°) 39 3.51 - 5.4 at (55° - 20°) 4.99 - 7.64 at (55° - 20°) 2.83 - 3.13 at (55° - 20°) 4 - 6.25 at (55° - 20°) 0.97 - 1.42 at (45°-20°) SSC 3.01 6.04 18.5 38.27 1.46 3.1 1.05 2.16 0.22 As per ESA policy, very high-resolution data over conflict areas cannot be provided.

  • Event - Meeting

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    PROBA-V QWG meeting 9

    The 9th Proba-V QWG took place in Brussels on 17th - 18th Apr, 2019.