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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 - Third Party Missions

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    GOSAT-1

    GOSAT-1 is a Japanese environment-monitoring satellite

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    GRACE

    GRACE stands for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and was a part of the international Earth Observing System (EOS) series of satellites.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    OceanSat-2

    OceanSat-2 provides service continuity for the operational users of the OCM (Ocean Colour Monitor) instrument launched in 1999 on board the predecessor IRS-P4/OceanSat-1 mission.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    Odin

    Odin is an atmosphere-studying satellite mission from Sweden, Canada, France and Finland.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    SCISAT-1

    SCISAT-1 is designed to make observations of Earth's atmosphere and its main instruments are an optical Fourier transform infrared spectrometer and an ultraviolet spectrophotometer.

  • Mission - Earth Explorers

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    EarthCARE

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

  • Mission - Meteorological Missions

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    Meteosat Second Generation

    The ESA Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) programme, started in 1994, is composed of four satellites.

  • Mission - Meteorological Missions

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    MetOp

    MetOp is a mission dedicated to improving weather forecasts and monitoring Earth's climate.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    Aura

    NASA's Aura mission studies the chemistry and dynamics of Earth's atmosphere from the ground through the mesosphere.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    Spire

    Spire Global's constellation of Lemur nanosatellites offer satellite-based maritime, aviation and weather tracking.

  • 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 - Third Party Missions

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    GOSAT-2

    GOSAT-2 (Greenhouse gases Observing Satellite-2) is a JAXA satellite dedicated to the observation of greenhouse gases.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    NOAA POES

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

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    GOSAT Series

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

  • 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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    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 - 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 - Earth Explorers

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    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

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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 - Earth Explorers

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    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.