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- Data (11)
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- Tools (2)
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- Campaigns (2)
- Documents (209)
News - Thematic area articles
Space data support Earth’s ecosystems
ESA’s Earth observation (EO) missions are making a critical contribution to monitoring transformations in our planet’s ecosystems, helping track changes in the vegetation, soil, and ocean that affect these systems.
News - Thematic area articles
Cloud-free collections key for land monitoring
Satellite imagery is a crucially important tool for monitoring the land, but cloud cover can often block parts of Earth’s surface from view, limiting subsequent analyses.
News - Success Stories
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 - Infographics
Focusing on Envisat MERIS Full Resolution Level-2 data
ESA's Envisat mission continued and expanded upon the legacy of its predecessors, the ERS (European Remote Sensing) satellites. Operating between 2002 and 2012, the satellite's 10 instruments acquired a decade of data for many applications.
Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)
Landsat RBV
This dataset contains Landsat 3 Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) products, acquired by ESA by the Fucino ground station over its visibility mask. The data (673 scenes) are the result of the digitalization of the original 70 millimetre (mm) black and white film rolls. The RBV instrument was mounted on board the Landsat 1 to 3 satellites between 1972 and 1983, with 80 metre resolution. Three independent co-aligned television cameras, one for each spectral band (band 1: blue-green, band 2: yellow-red, band 3: NIR), constituted this instrument. The RBV system was redesigned for Landsat 3 to use two cameras operating in one broad spectral band (green to near-infrared; 0.505–0.750 µm), mounted side-by-side, with panchromatic spectral response and higher spatial resolution than on Landsat 1 and Landsat 2. Each of the cameras produced a swath of about 90 km (for a total swath of 180 km), with a spatial resolution of 40 m.
News - Thematic area articles
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.
News - Success Stories
New worldwide dataset captures the planet in fine detail
Scientists have developed an open source planetwide dataset of high-resolution Earth observation imagery, thanks to commercial data delivered by ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme.
Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)
Landsat 5 TM European and Mediterranean Countries Cloud Free Collection
This dataset contains the cloud-free products from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper collection acquired over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East; for each scene only one product is selected, with the minimal cloud coverage. The acquired Landsat TM scene covers approximately 183 x 172.8 km. A standard full scene is nominally centred on the intersection between a path and row (the actual image centre can vary by up to 100 m). The data are system corrected.
News - Data Release news
Full European Landsat data collection now available under the same catalogue
The Full European Landsat data collection, from Landsat-1 to Landsat-8, is now available under the same catalogue
Event - Training
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.
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 - 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.
News - Success Stories
How Envisat helped to shape global understanding of Earth’s systems
Twenty years have passed since a ground-breaking European spacecraft designed to deliver unprecedented insight into the planet’s changing environment was lofted into orbit.
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.
Data - Data Description
Landsat TM ESA archive
This dataset contains all the Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper high-quality ortho-rectified L1T dataset acquired by ESA over the Fucino, Matera, Kiruna and Maspalomas visibility masks, as well as campaign data over Malindi, Bishkek, Chetumal, and Libreville. The acquired Landsat TM scene covers approximately 183 x 172.8 km. A standard full scene is nominally centred on the intersection between a path and row (the actual image centre can vary by up to 100 m). A full image is composed of 6920 pixels x 5760 lines and each band requires 40 MB of storage space (uncompressed) at 30 m spatial resolution in the VIS, NIR and SWIR as well as 120 m in the TIR spectral range. Kiruna Landsat TM GTC density map Maspalomas Landsat TM GTC density map Matera Landsat TM GTC density map
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 - Project Proposal (Restrained)
SPOT-6 to 7 full archive and tasking
The SPOT 6 and 7 satellites ensure data continuity with the no longer operational SPOT 5 satellite and provide an archive of very high resolution optical acquisition as well as the possibility to task the satellites for new acquisitions. Following the completion of the SPOT 7 mission in March 2023, new acquisition tasking is only available for the SPOT 6 satellite. The ortho-products are automatically generated by the SPOT 6 and 7 ground segment, based on SRTM database or Reference3D when available. The projection available for SPOT 6 and 7 ortho-products is UTM, datum WGS84. Bands combinations: Pansharpened: colour image at 1.5 m resolution Bundle: 1.5 m panchromatic image and 6 m multispectral image. Geometric processing levels: Primary: The Primary product is the processing level closest to the natural image acquired by the sensor. This product restores perfect collection conditions: the sensor is placed in rectilinear geometry, and the image is clear of all radiometric distortion. Standard Ortho: The Ortho product is a georeferenced image in Earth geometry, corrected from acquisition and terrain off-nadir effects. Tailored ortho: Aside from the Standard Ortho product, when different specifications are needed, a custom orthorectification, with a more precise 3D model provided by the client or acquired for the purpose, can be provided on demand. As per ESA policy, very high-resolution imagery of conflict areas cannot be provided.
News - Data Release news
New reprocessed Landsat data on a new dissemination server
The full ESA Landsat archive has been reprocessed with the latest version of the processor to provide a homogenous dataset covering MSS, TM and ETM+ data.
News - Infographics
Envisat - ESA's versatile Earth observation satellite
Learn more about ESA's Envisat mission - the largest Earth observation satellite ever built - in a new infographic.