News - General News

ESA's improved Earth system data records: what is in store for the future?

Fundamental Data Records (FDRs) are instrumental in advancing our understanding of Earth systems and for addressing societal challenges effectively. These long-term records contain uncertainty-quantified, calibrated and geo-located multi-instrument/multi-platform satellite sensor data spanning several decades to support climate-related applications.

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 - Data Release news

SMOS L2 Sea Surface Salinity products documentation updates

SMOS L2 Sea Surface Salinity product validation report is now available.

News - Spotlight on EO community

Introducing Mirko Albani

In this short introduction, ESA's Heritage Missions Programme Manager describes what he likes most about ESA's long term archive of satellite mission data and his role in the programme.

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.

Mission - Earth Explorers

SMOS

The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission is dedicated to making global observations of soil moisture over land and salinity over oceans.

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.

Campaign

DOMEX-1

The purpose of the DOMEX experiment was to acquire the first combined, in-situ microwave emission measurements using C- and L-band radiometers.

Tools - Visualisation

SMOS Global Mapping Tool

The SMOS Global Mapping Tool (GMT) is useful for plotting the SMOS data into a single global geographical map.

Document - General Reference

DRAGON 2 Programme - Brochure 2009

The Dragon Programme is a cooperation between ESA and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of the P.R. China. This brochure presents the activities undertaken since the formal start of the programme in April 2009, its background, objectives, partners and project themes.

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

Tools - Processing

SMOS NetCDF Conversion Tool

The SMOS NetCDF Conversion Tool, for batch processing of large amounts of files, is available as a stand-alone command line executable or integrated in the SMOS Toolbox/SNAP.

News - Success Stories

Mapping salty waters

The length and precision with which climate scientists can track the salinity, or saltiness, of the oceans is set to improve dramatically.

Event - Conference

3rd ERS Symposium

The ESA Directorate for Observation of the Earth and its Environment held the 3rd ERS Symposium, in 1997, where many of the results from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 missions were presented and discussed by the scientific community.

Document - General Reference

The Nine Candidate Earth Explorer Missions - Topography Mission

This report for assessment addresses the Topography mission when it was selected with other nine Earth Explorer missions as a potential candidate for Phase A study.