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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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    COSMO-SkyMed

    COSMO-SkyMed is an Italian Earth-imaging constellation consisting of four identical satellites which launched between 2007 and 2010.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    GEOSAT-2

    GEOSAT-2 is the second satellite of the Deimos Earth Observation system, following GEOSAT-1.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    GeoEye-1

    At the time of its launch, GeoEye-1 was the world's highest-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite.

  • Mission - Heritage Missions

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    Landsat-7

    Landsat-7 is a joint USGS and NASA-led Earth observation mission, which was launched in 1999 and remains operational.

  • 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 - 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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    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 - Third Party Missions

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    SPOT 6

    SPOT 6, like all the SPOT missions, is aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    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.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    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.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    ICEYE

    As of June 2023, 27 X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites have been launched for the ICEYE constellation. This enables all-weather Earth observation.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    PlanetScope

    The PlanetScope satellite constellation consists of multiple launches of groups of individual cubesats (Doves and SuperDoves).

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    SkySat

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

  • 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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    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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    RADARSAT

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

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X

    The TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X satellites feature a unique geometric accuracy that is unmatched by any other spaceborne sensor.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    WorldView Series

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

  • 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 - Third Party Missions

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    PAZ

    The PAZ (Spanish for “peace”) satellite, operates as a constellation alongside TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X.