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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 - 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 - 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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    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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    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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    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 - 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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    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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    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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    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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    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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    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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    SPOT 7

    SPOT 7 (also known as Azersky), like all of the other SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.

  • 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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    SPOT 5

    SPOT 5, like all the SPOT missions, was aimed at supplying high-resolution, wide-area optical imagery.

  • Mission - Third Party 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 - Third Party 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 - Third Party 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 - Third Party 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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    Seasat

    On board Seasat was the first-ever space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system for science applications.

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