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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.

  • EarthCARE

    EarthCARE examines the role clouds and aerosols play in trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth's surface.

  • SMOS

    The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission is dedicated to making global observations of soil moisture over land and salinity over oceans.

  • FLEX

    The FLEX mission will provide global maps of vegetation fluorescence, which can be converted into an indicator of photosynthetic activity.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • TanSat

    The TanSat mission is one of the Earth Observation projects managed by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and is dedicated to detecting and monitoring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

  • GHGSat

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

  • Copernicus Sentinel-5P

    The Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor mission is the first Copernicus mission dedicated to monitoring our atmosphere.

  • Copernicus Sentinel-3

    Copernicus Sentinel-3 is an European Earth Observation satellite mission developed to support Copernicus ocean, land, atmospheric, emergency, security and cryospheric applications.

  • Copernicus Sentinel-2

    The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission comprises a constellation of two polar-orbiting satellites placed in the same sun-synchronous orbit, phased at 180° to each other.

  • WorldView-4

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

  • 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.

  • GOSAT Series

    The GOSAT series is composed of two environment-monitoring satellites developed by JAXA dedicated to the observation of greenhouse gases.

  • 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.

  • Landsat-4 and Landsat-5

    The Landsat-4 and Landsat-5 missions continued the Landsat programme's goal of providing moderate-resolution optical remote sensing for land, coastal areas and shallow waters.

  • NOAA POES

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