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  • Data (4)
  • News (12)
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  • Events (2)
  • Tools (2)
  • Activities (3)
  • Documents (402)
  • News - Operational News

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    Change of access to FTP-S for ERS and Envisat atmospheric and low-rate data

    As of 13 December 2023, access to a series of ERS and Envisat atmospheric and low rate data collections changed from simple FTP to FTP-S.

  • News - Data Release news

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    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

  • News - Thematic area articles

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    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 - Events and Proceedings

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    National missions in the spotlight at the Living Planet Symposium

    In the framework of ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme, the agency offers access to the full data archives of almost 50 satellite missions, which are owned by organisations around the world.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Activity - Projects

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    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

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    ERS' Contribution to Altimetry

    Satellite radar altimetry missions have transformed the way we see Earth and its oceans. Using the ranging capability of radars, they measure the surface topography profile along a satellite’s track.

  • News - Data Release news

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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.

  • Event - Conference

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    GRSG 2015 Conference

    The 26th Annual GRSG Conference 'Challenges in Geological Remote Sensing' focused on a wide range of remote sensing applications, tools, latest developments and sensors.

  • Data - Fast Registration with immediate access (Open)

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    ERS-1/2 SCATTEROMETER Ocean Wind field and Sea Ice probability [ASPS20.H/ASPS20.N]

    The ASPS Level 2 products contain, for each node: the radar backscattering sigma nought for the three beams of the instrument, the four aliased wind solutions (Rank 1-4 wind vector) and the de-aliased wind vector flag, the sea-ice probability and sea-ice flag, the YAW quality flag. The wind retrieval is performed with the CMOD5N geophysical model function derived by ECMWF to compute the neutral winds rather than 10 m winds. ASPS L2.0 High resolution products are provided with a spatial resolution of 25x25 km and a grid spacing of 12.5 km. ASPS L2.0 Nominal resolution products are provided with a spatial resolution of 50x50 km and a grid spacing of 25 km. One product covers one orbit from ascending node crossing. Please consult the Product Quality Readme file before using the ERS ASPS data.

  • Data - Fast Registration with immediate access (Open)

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    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.

  • Data - Fast Registration with immediate access (Open)

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    ERS-1/2 SCATTEROMETER Nominal Resolution back-scattering measurements, Ocean Wind field [UWI]

    The ERS data reprocessed with the ASPS facility is also available in the UWI format to maintain the compatibility with the FD (Fast Delivery) products. The ASPS UWI product is organised in frames of 500 x 500 km providing the radar backscattering sigma nought for the three beams of the instrument plus the wind speed and direction. The wind retrieval is performed with the CMOD5N geophysical model function derived by ECMWF to compute the neutral winds rather than 10m winds. ASPS UWI products are provided with a spatial resolution of 50 x 50 km and a grid spacing of 25 km. One product covers one orbit from ascending node crossing. Please consult the Product Quality Readme file before using the ERS ASPS data.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    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.

  • 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.

  • Activity - Quality

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    EDAP

    The ESA Earthnet Data Assessment Pilot (EDAP) project will perform assessments for various missions to ensure the delivered data is fit for purpose.