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MISSIONS

Explore the European Space Agency's Earth Observation satellite missions. Learn all about ESA's dedicated Earth Explorers or collaborations with other agencies through the Third Party Missions programme.

  • Swarm

    Swarm is dedicated to creating a highly detailed survey of Earth’s geomagnetic field and its temporal evolution as well as the electric field in the atmosphere using a constellation of three identical satellites.

  • Biomass

    The objective of the Biomass mission is to determine the global distribution of forest biomass.

  • PROBA-V

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

  • PROBA-1

    PROBA-1 is a technology demonstration satellite that later became an operational Earth observation mission.

  • GOCE

    ESA's Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission mapped Earth's geoid very accurately, opening a window into Earth's interior structure as well as the currents circulating within the depths of its oceans.

  • Envisat

    Envisat was ESA's successor to ERS. Envisat carried ten instruments aboard for a wide range of Earth observing fields. The mission was operational from 2002 to 2012.

  • 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.

  • HydroGNSS

    HydroGNSS is a microsatellite mission, which is part of the Scout framework, and consists of a GNSS-R (Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry) constellation that primarily addresses land. Scout missions are a new element in ESA's Earth Observation FutureEO Programme.

  • MOS-1/1B

    MOS-1 and 1B, Japan’s first marine observation satellites, were designed to monitor ocean currents, sea surface temperature, atmospheric water vapour, ocean chlorophyll levels, precipitation, and land vegetation.

  • Swarm Product Data Handbook

    The Swarm Product Data Handbook provides a detailed description of Level 1b and Level 2 products derived from Swarm data.

  • GHGSat

    The GHGSat mission is dedicated to measuring emissions of greenhouse gases.

  • WorldView-4

    WorldView-4 was an imaging and environment-monitoring satellite from Maxar of the United States, which offered very high resolution imagery.

  • WorldView-1

    WorldView-1 helped meet the growing commercial demand for multi-spectral geospatial imagery.

  • WorldView Series

    The WorldView constellation are environment-monitoring satellites that have been supplying imagery since 2007.

  • RADARSAT

    The RADARSAT programme consists of a pair of remote sensing satellites from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

  • NOAA POES

    NOAA's AVHRR sensor is carried on the POES mission, a constellation of polar orbiting weather satellites.

  • SPOT

    The SPOT (from French "Satellite pour l'Observation de la Terre") series of missions has been supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery since 1986.

  • SkySat

    SkySat is a constellation of high-resolution Earth imaging satellites from the commercial company Planet Labs.

  • WorldView-3

    WorldView-3 is the first multi-payload, super-spectral, high-resolution commercial satellite sensor operating at an altitude of 617 km. WorldView-3 is capable of collecting up to 680,000 square km per day.

  • WorldView-2

    WorldView-2 is an environment-monitoring satellite from Maxar which presents images as the human eye can perceive them, creating a more realistic 'true colour' view of the world.