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  • All Categories (192)
  • Data (2)
  • News (10)
  • Missions (4)
  • Events (3)
  • Tools (3)
  • Campaigns (1)
  • Documents (169)
  • 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 - 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 - 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.

  • 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.

  • News - Thematic area articles

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    How satellite data help to shape society

    Data from ESA’s Earth observation archives are improving understanding of the interactions between human activities and the environment, helping to power green economic development and boosting prosperity in Europe and beyond.

  • Event - Training

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    EO Summer School 3

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

  • News - Data Release news

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    New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data now available

    Within ESA’s Landsat offering, access to the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data is now available.

  • 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.

  • Data - EO Sign In Authentication (Open)

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    Landsat 8 Collection 2 European Coverage

    This dataset contains the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection 2 data, both Level-1 and Level-2, acquired since the beginning of the mission. Landsat-8 Collection 2 is the result of a reprocessing effort on the archive and on newly acquired products with significant improvement with respect to Collection 1 on data quality, obtained by means of advancements in data processing and algorithm development. Primarily, this involves a relevant improvement in the absolute geolocation accuracy (now re-baselined to the European Space Agency Copernicus Sentinel-2 Global Reference Image (GRI) but also includes updated digital elevation modelling sources, improved Radiometric Calibration (even correction for the TIRS striping effect), enhanced Quality Assessment Bands, updated and consistent metadata files and usage of Cloud Optimised Georeferenced (COG) Tagged Image File Format. Landsat-8 Level-1 products combine data from the two Landsat instruments, OLI and TIRS. The Level-1 products generated can be either L1TP or L1GT: L1TP - Level-1 Precision Terrain (Corrected) (L1T) products: Radiometrically calibrated and orthorectified using ground control points (GCPs) and digital elevation model (DEM) data to correct for relief displacement. The highest quality Level-1 products suitable for pixel-level time series analysis. GCPs used for L1TP correction are derived from the Global Land Survey 2000 (GLS2000) data set. L1GT - Level-1 Systematic Terrain (Corrected) (L1GT) products: L1GT data products consist of Level-0 product data with systematic radiometric, geometric and terrain corrections applied and resampled for registration to a cartographic projection, referenced to the WGS84, G873, or current version. The dissemination server contains three different classes of Level-1 products Real Time (RT): Newly acquired Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS data are processed upon downlink but use an initial TIRS line-of-sight model parameters; the data are made available in less than 12 hours (4-6 hours typically). Once the data have been reprocessed with the refined TIRS parameters, the products are transitioned to either Tier 1 or Tier 2 and removed from the Real-Time tier (in 14-16 days). Tier 1 (T1): Landsat scenes with the highest available data quality are placed into Tier 1 and are considered suitable for time-series analysis. Tier 1 includes Level-1 Precision and Terrain (L1TP) corrected data that have well-characterized radiometry and are inter-calibrated across the different Landsat instruments. The georegistration of Tier 1 scenes is consistent and within prescribed image-to-image tolerances of ≦ 12-metre radial root mean square error (RMSE). Tier 2 (T2): Landsat scenes not meeting Tier 1 criteria during processing are assigned to Tier 2. Tier 2 scenes adhere to the same radiometric standard as Tier 1 scenes, but do not meet the Tier 1 geometry specification due to less accurate orbital information (specific to older Landsat sensors), significant cloud cover, insufficient ground control, or other factors. This includes Systematic Terrain (L1GT) and Systematic (L1GS) processed data. Landsat-8 Level-2 products are generated from L1GT and L1TP Level-1 products that meet the <76 degrees Solar Zenith Angle constraint and include the required auxiliary data inputs to generate a scientifically viable product. The data are available a couple of days after the Level-1 T1/T2. The Level-2 products generated can be L2SP or L2SR: L2SP - Level-2 Science Products (L2SP) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), Surface Temperature (ST), ST intermediate bands, an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands. L2SR - Level-2 Surface Reflectance (L2SR) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands; it is generated if ST could not be generated. Two different categories of Level-1 products are offered: LC with Optical, Thermal and Quality Map images, LO with Optical and Quality Map images (Thermal not available). For the Level-2 data, only LC combined products are generated.

  • News - Data Release news

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    New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data available from January

    From the beginning of 2022, ESA will start the distribution of the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 products.

  • Event - Workshop

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    Space and the Arctic 2009 Workshop

    Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at an unprecedented rate. This workshop looked at the needs and challenges of working and living in the rapidly changing Arctic and explore how space-based services might help to meet those needs.

  • News - Infographics

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    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

  • Tools - Other

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    Hydrology TEP

    The Hydrology Thematic Exploitation Platform (TEP) enables access, processing, uploading, visualisation, manipulation and comparison of hydrological data.

  • Tools - Other

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    Forestry TEP

    The Forestry Thematic Exploitation Platform (TEP) enables users in the forestry sector to access satellite data based processing services and tools for generating value-added forest information products.

  • Data - Data Description

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    PROBA-V 1 km, 333 m, and 100 m products

    The PROBA-V VEGETATION Raw products and Synthesis products provided coverage of all significant landmasses worldwide with, in the case of a 10-day synthesis product, a minimum effect of cloud cover, resulting from selection of cloud-free acquisitions during the 10-day period. It provided a daily coverage between Latitudes 35°N and 75°N, and between 35°S and 56°S, and a full coverage every two days at the equator. The VEGETATION instrument was pre-programmed with an indefinite repeated sequence of acquisitions. This nominal acquisition scenario allowed a continuous series of identical products to be generated, with the goal to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days. Level Synthesis Resolution resolution (m) Reflectance Level-1C n/a TOA Level-2A n/a 100 m TOA 333 m TOA 1 km TOA Level-3 S1 100 m TOA TOC TOC NDVI 333 m TOA TOC 1 km TOA TOC S5 100 m TOA TOC TOC NDVI S10 333 m TOC TOC NDVI 1 km TOC TOC NDVI Raw Products Overview Product Description Level-1C Level-1C segments (P – product): Radiometrically corrected Level-1B data, in raw sensor geometry (unprojected) Contains: - Top Of Atmosphere reflectance in the four spectral bands - Longitude/latitude information for every pixel - Geometric viewing conditions - Information on the status map (indicating missing and interpolated measurements). Format: HDF5 & GeoTiFF Level-2A Level-2A segment: projected Level-1C (P–product) data, radiometrically and geometrically corrected. Contains: - TOA reflectance values in the four spectral bands without atmospheric correction being performed - Information on the status map (containing identification of radiometric quality, snow, ice, shadow, clouds, land/sea for every pixel) - Geometric viewing conditions Plate carrée projection (EPSG:4326) with spatial resolution of 100 m, 333 m and 1 km Format: HDF5 & GeoTiFF Synthesis Products Overview Level-3 S1 = daily, S5 = 5 days, S10 = decade Different spatial resolution: 100 m, 333 m and 1 km Divided into so called granules, each measuring 10 degrees x 10 degrees, each granule being delivered as a single file Plate carrée projection (EPSG:4326) Format: HDF5 & GeoTiFF Products Content TOA - Top Of Atmosphere reflectance in the four spectral bands (no atmospheric correction applied) - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) -Information on the composite status map (containing identification of snow, ice, shadow, clouds, land/sea for every pixel) - Geometric viewing conditions & date and time of selected measurement TOC Level-2A segment: projected Level-1C (P–product) data, radiometrically and geometrically corrected. Contains: - Top Of Canopy (ground surface) reflectance in the four spectral bands, the atmospheric correction being performed using the SMAC (Simplified Method for Atmospheric Corrections) algorithm - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) - Information on the composite status map (containing identification of snow, ice, shadow, clouds, land/sea for every pixel) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from Top Of Canopy product (SMAC algorithm for atmospheric corrections applied) - Geometric viewing conditions & date and time of selected measurement TOC NDVI Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from Top Of Canopy product (SMAC algorithm for atmospheric corrections applied)

  • Mission - Earth Watch

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    PROBA-V

    The PROBA-V mission provides multispectral images to study the evolution of the vegetation cover on a daily and global basis.

  • Campaign

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    BACCHUS-DOC

    The BACCHUS-DOC Radar and Optical Campaign was an area mapping project of vineyards near Frascati (Italy). ESA required high resolution geo-referenced airborne SAR data of different wavelength and polarisation (preferably polarimetric).

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    Landsat Series

    The Landsat Series is the world's longest running system of satellites for moderate-resolution optical remote sensing for land, coastal areas and shallow waters.