News - Success Stories

New cross-calibration readies PROBA-1 data for climate research

While PROBA-1 has already exceeded expectations by suppling over 21 years of Earth observation hyperspectral data, recent cross-calibration activities are aiming to ensure the data will robustly serve long time-series research, even when the satellite ends operations.

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 - Infographics

PROBA-1 - From technology demonstration to long-term Earth observation

Learn about ESA's PROBA-1 (Project for On-Board Autonomy) mission in our new infographic.

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.

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 immediate access (Open)

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 - Third Party Missions

PROBA-1

PROBA-1 is a technology demonstration satellite that later became an operational Earth observation mission.

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 - Proceedings

Hyperspectral Workshop 2010

Proceedings of the Hyperspectral Workshop 2010 held on 17-18 March 2010 in ESA-ESRIN, Frascati, Italy. This workshop was organised by the European Space Agency (ESA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR)/the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).

Document - General Reference

Overview of an Intelligent Sensorweb for Integrated Earth Sensing Project

Document - General Reference

Earth from Space - 5 Years of Proba

Document - General Reference

Autonomy-in-action-Ten-years-of-Proba-1.pdf

This is an article extracted from the ESA Bulletin Nr.148.

Document - General Reference

Big-year-for-small-satellite-ESAs-second-in-orbit-technology-demonstration-mission-Proba-2.pdf

This is an article extracted from the ESA Bulletin Nr.144.

Document - General Reference

BIOMASS-Report-for-Mission-Selection-An-Earth-Explorer-to-observe-forest-biomass.pdf

The objective of the BIOMASS Mission is to determine the global distribution of forest biomass by reducing the uncertainty in the calculation of carbon stock and fluxes associated with the terrestrial biosphere.

Document - General Reference

Earth-from-Space-Deserts.pdf

This brochure is a collection of Envisat MERIS, Envisat ASAR, Proba and Landsat mosaics of desert areas on our planet.

Document - General Reference

Earth-from-Space-Deltas-and-Lakes.pdf

This brochure is a collection of Envisat MERIS, Envisat ASAR, ERS, Proba and Landsat mosaics.

Document - General Reference

Earth-from-Space-China.pdf

This brochure is a collection of Envisat MERIS, Envisat ASAR and PROBA mosaics of China. The attached CD-rom contains the same images in electronic version.

Document - General Reference

Earth-from-Space-Africa.pdf

This brochure is a collection of Envisat MERIS, Envisat ASAR and Proba HRC mosaics of Africa.