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Heritage Missions

ESA's Heritage missions programme preserves 30 years of historical data from more than 45 satellite missions that are no longer operational.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    ALOS-1

    The Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS-1) was a Japanese Earth-imaging satellite from JAXA

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    DMC First Generation

    The Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) is a constellation of microsatellites formerly coordinated by DMCii to provide frequent observations of the Earth for monitoring natural disasters.

  • 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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    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 - Third Party Missions

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    GEOSAT-1

    GEOSAT-1 is part of a group of satellites collectively known as the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC).

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    GEOSAT-2

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

  • Mission - Earth Explorers

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    GOCE

    ESA's Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission mapped Earth's geoid very accurately, opening a window into Earth's interior structure as well as the currents circulating within the depths of its oceans. 

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    IRS-1C

    IRS-1C is part of the IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) satellites, a large family of Earth observation satellites operated by ISRO.

  • Mission - Third Party 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 - Third Party Missions

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    IRS-1D

    IRS-1D was part of the IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) satellites, a large family of Earth observation satellites operated by ISRO.

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    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 - Third Party 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

  • Mission - Third Party Missions

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    KOMPSAT-2

    KOMPSAT-2 (Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite-2), also known as Arirang-2, was developed by KARI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute) to continue the observation programme of the KOMPSAT-1 mission.

  • Mission - Third Party 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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    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 - Third Party 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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    QuickBird-2

    QuickBird-2 was an Earth-imaging satellite. When launched in 2001, it was then the highest resolution commercial satellite.

  • Mission - Third Party 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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    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.

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