News - Infographics

Key facts about Canada's ozone-studying SCISAT mission

Learn about the SCISAT mission in our new infographic.

News - General News

Pioneering science missions: Summarising ESA’s Earth Explorers

Designed for research purposes, ESA's Earth Explorer missions are dedicated to monitoring parts of Earth’s system. Learn more about the Earth Explorers in this video.

News - Thematic area articles

Satellites expand research on Space Weather and Sun-Earth Interactions

Earth observation data provide vital warnings about the impact of solar activity and strive to unravel the influence the Sun has on Earth’s system.

Event - Training

EO Summer School 6

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

Event - Conference

Living Planet Symposium 2022

Learn about the 2022 edition of ESA's Living Planet Symposium.

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 - Thematic area articles

Space data help to unravel the complexities of Earth’s atmosphere

As the impacts of the climate crisis intensify, scientists are using ESA’s Earth observation archives to investigate atmospheric processes and their influences on the planet’s changing environment.

News - Spotlight on EO community

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.

Event - Conference

EGU General Assembly 2019

The annual European Geoscience Union (EGU) General Assembly brings together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting to cover all disciplines of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences.

News - Infographics

An overview of ESA's Third Party Missions programme

ESA’s Third Party Missions programme consists of almost 50 satellite missions, which are owned by organisations around the world. ESA has agreements with these organisations to acquire, process, and distribute data from their missions

Document - Publication - Paper

Atmospheric-Chemistry-Experiment-ACE-Mission-Overview.pdf

This paper was published in the GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, Vol.32 (L15S01, doi:10.1029/2005GL022386, 2005) and presents an overview of the Canadian mission SCISAT-1 (also known as the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment ACE) and some of its first scientific results.

Activity - General activities

EO Science for Society

ESA's Earth Observation Science for Society programme aims to promote scientific exploitation of satellite data, forges new scientific discoveries and pioneers new services, stimulating downstream industrial and economic growth.

Data - External Data (Restrained)

SciSat-1: ACE-FTS and MAESTRO

SCISAT-1 data aim at monitoring and analysing the chemical processes that control the distribution of ozone in the upper troposphere and stratosphere. It provides acquisitions from the two instruments MAESTRO and ACE-FTS. MAESTRO: Measurement of Aerosol Extinction in the Stratosphere and Troposphere Retrieved by Occultation. Dual-channel optical spectrometer in the spectral region of 285-1030 nm. The objective is to measure ozone, nitrogen dioxide and aerosol/cloud extinction (solar occultation measurements of atmospheric attenuation during satellite sunrise and sunset with the primary objective of assessing the stratospheric ozone budget). Solar occultation spectra are being used for retrieving vertical profiles of temperature and pressure, aerosols, and trace gases (O3, NO2, H2O, OClO, and BrO) involved in middle atmosphere ozone distribution. The use of two overlapping spectrometers (280 - 550 nm, 500 - 1030 nm) improves the stray-light performance. The spectral resolution is about 1-2 nm. ACE-FTS: Fourier Transform Spectrometer. The objective is to measure the vertical distribution of atmospheric trace gases, in particular of the regional polar O3 budget, as well as pressure and temperature (derived from CO2 lines). The instrument is an adapted version of the classical sweeping Michelson interferometer, using an optimised optical layout. The ACE-FTS measurements are recorded every 2 s. This corresponds to a measurement spacing of 2-6 km which decreases at lower altitudes due to refraction. The typical altitude spacing changes with the orbital beta angle. For historical reasons, the retrieved results are interpolated onto a 1 km "grid" using a piecewise quadratic method. For ACE-FTS version 1.0, the results were reported only on the interpolated grid (every 1 km from 0.5 to 149.5 km). For versions 2.2, both the "retrieval" grid and the "1 km" grid profiles are available. SCISAT-1 collection provides ACE-FTS and MAESTRO Level 2 Data. As of today, ACE-FTS products are available in version 4.1, while MAESTRO products are available in version 3.13.

Document - Proceedings

1st MSG RAO Workshop

Proceedings of the workshop organised by ESA and EUMETSAT held in CNR of Bologna, Italy in May 2000.

Document - Proceedings

Earth Observation for Land-Atmosphere Interaction Science

Proceedings of the Topical Conference Earth Observation for Land-Atmosphere Interaction Science held from 3-5 November 2010 at the premises of ESA-ESRIN in Frascati (Rome) Italy.

Document - Proceedings

Dragon Programme Mid-Term Results

Proceedings of the 2005 Dragon Symposium held on 27 June - 1 July 2005 in Santorini, Greece.

Document - Product Specifications

ACE-FTS Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment - File format description for ACE-Imager level 2 data ---

Document - Product Specifications

ACE-FTS Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment- File format description for ACE-FTS level 2 data ---

Event - Conference

27th IUGG General Assembly

The 27th IUGG General Assembly offered the opportunity for participants from Canada and from around the world to come together and share their science and culture.

Event - Conference

Living Planet Symposium 2019

ESA's Living Planet Symposia are amongst the biggest Earth observation conferences in the world. Scientists present their latest findings on Earth's environment and climate.