- All Categories (2304)
- Data (34)
- News (71)
- Missions (20)
- Events (38)
- Tools (4)
- Activities (2)
- Campaigns (8)
- Documents (2127)
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.
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 - Earth Watch
PROBA-V
The PROBA-V mission provides multispectral images to study the evolution of the vegetation cover on a daily and global basis.
Mission - Third Party Missions
PROBA-1
PROBA-1 is a technology demonstration satellite that later became an operational Earth observation mission.
Mission - Heritage Missions
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.
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.
Mission - Heritage Missions
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.
Mission - Third Party Missions
FSSCat
The FSSCat mission was an innovative concept that consisted of two federated 6-Unit Cubesats, called ³Cat-5/A and ³Cat-5/B, which operated in support of the Copernicus Land and Marine Environment services.
Mission - Third Party Missions
WorldView-4
WorldView-4 was an imaging and environment-monitoring satellite from Maxar of the United States, which offered very high resolution imagery.
Mission - Heritage Missions
NOAA POES
NOAA's AVHRR sensor is carried on the POES mission, a constellation of polar orbiting weather satellites.
Mission - Heritage Missions
IRS-P6 (ResourceSat-1)
IRS-P6 (also known as ResourceSat-1) launched on 17 October 2003 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre by the Indian PSLV-C5, and came to an end on 30 September 2013.
Mission - Heritage Missions
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.
Mission - Third Party Missions
SkySat
SkySat is a constellation of high-resolution Earth imaging satellites from the commercial company Planet Labs.
Mission - Heritage Missions
SPOT 4
SPOT 4, like all the SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.
Mission - Heritage Missions
SPOT 3
SPOT 3, like all the SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.
Mission - Heritage Missions
SPOT 2
SPOT 2, like all the SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.
Mission - Heritage Missions
SPOT 1
SPOT 1 was designed to improve the knowledge and management of Earth's resources, detecting and forecasting phenomena involving climatology and oceanography, and monitoring human activities and natural phenomena.
Mission - Third Party Missions
IRS-R2 (ResourceSat-2)
IRS-R2 (ResourceSat-2) continues the remote sensing data services to global users provided by the ResourceSat-1 mission and also provides data with enhanced multispectral/ spatial coverage.
Mission - Heritage Missions
RapidEye
Together, the five RapidEye satellites were capable of collecting over 4 million square kilometres of 5 m resolution, 5-band colour imagery every day.
Mission - Third Party Missions
Pléiades
The Pléiades programme followed the SPOT programme satellite series, introducing advanced technologies in Earth observation.
Mission - Heritage Missions
JERS-1
The overall objectives of JERS-1 (Japanese Earth Resources Satellite) were the generation of global data sets with SAR and OPS sensors aimed at surveying resources, establishing an integrated Earth observation system