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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.

  • 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.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    PROBA-1

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

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    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

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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 - Third Party Missions

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    Vision-1

    Launched on 16 September 2018, Vision-1 offers orthorectified products with resolution up to 87 cm in panchromatic mode and 3.48 in multispectral mode as standard.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    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

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    IRS-1C and IRS-1D

    The Indian Remote Sensing satellites IRS-1C and IRS-1D were identical Earth-imaging satellites operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation.

  • 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.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    Landsat-1 to Landsat-3

    The Landsat-1 to 3 satellites were the first in the United States' Landsat programme, dedicated to monitoring the Earth's land mass.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    GEOSAT

    The GEOSAT series consists of GEOSAT-1 and GEOSAT-2 missions. They are Earth imaging satellites. GEOSAT-2, a high resolution satellite, became the first European fully-private satellite capable of providing sub-metric multi-spectral imagery.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    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 - Heritage Missions

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    SPOT 4

    SPOT 4, like all the SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    SPOT 3

    SPOT 3, like all the SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    SPOT 2

    SPOT 2, like all the SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    Pléiades

    The Pléiades programme followed the SPOT programme satellite series, introducing advanced technologies in Earth observation.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    Landsat-8

    Landsat-8 is an Earth-imaging satellite from USGS and NASA which launched in 2013. The Landsat programme provides a global archive of satellite imagery.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    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