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Success Stories

Read articles about the successes of ESA's mission programmes and applications of the data obtained by the satellites.

  • News - Success Stories

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    21 Sept 2023

    Rome supersite helps validate atmospheric space data

    In the sprawling, urban area of Rome, where atmospheric composition is impacted by complex coastal weather and pollution, ESA supports a powerful observatory spread across several locations.

  • News - Success Stories

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    13 Sept 2023

    ESA Earth observation archives preserved in Arctic vault

    ESA has added to its store of Earth observation records housed in a secure vault in the Norwegian Arctic, ensuring that knowledge from a crucial chapter in European remote sensing history is safeguarded for future generations.

  • News - Success Stories

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    31 Aug 2023

    New CryoSat data to boost understanding of the oceans

    A new CryoSat sea level anomaly product designed to enable ocean science and the development of operational marine applications has been released.

  • News - Success Stories

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    30 Aug 2023

    Synergy of space data helps modernise irrigation systems

    The growing demands on agriculture, coupled with the climate crisis, are pressurising Earth’s valuable freshwater resources and making assessment of water practices ever more important.

  • News - Success Stories

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    22 Aug 2023

    Commercial space data help to regreen grasslands in Africa

    Commercial satellite imagery made available through ESA’s Third Party Missions programme is guiding an ambitious community-focused initiative to regrow natural grasslands in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

  • News - Success Stories

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    17 Aug 2023

    Commercial and international data for fire monitoring

    As climate change sparks a surge in the frequency and intensity of wildfires, satellite data disseminated through ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme are helping scientists to track and investigate these potentially damaging natural events.

  • News - Success Stories

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    17 July 2023

    Young scientists bid farewell to ESA's wind mission

    Students and early career researchers are saying an emotional goodbye to Aeolus ahead of its upcoming reentry.

  • News - Success Stories

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    29 June 2023

    ESA missions help to reveal worldwide lake water loss trend

    Climate change, human consumption and sedimentation are depleting more than half of the world’s biggest lakes of water, according to a ground-breaking analysis that drew on three decades of satellite data.

  • News - Success Stories

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    5 June 2023

    TPM data help advance plastic litter detection from space

    Several innovative ESA Discovery element projects exploring remote sensing of plastic marine litter lean on commercial satellite data disseminated via the Agency’s Third Party Mission programme.

  • News - Success Stories

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    24 May 2023

    SMOS data reveal ecosystems' resistance to drought

    Climate change is rapidly altering the world’s ecosystems, causing extreme weather conditions, such as droughts, to become increasingly frequent. Understanding the factors that contribute to ecosystem resilience to extreme events is vital to develop more effective strategies for climate adaptation and mitigation.

  • News - Success Stories

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    23 May 2023

    Aeolus enhances volcanic ash forecasts for aviation safety

    A new study, using wind data from ESA’s Aeolus mission, highlights the importance of using satellite missions like Aeolus to improve volcanic ash forecasting and ensure aviation safety in the future.

  • News - Success Stories

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    12 May 2023

    Collaboration and perseverance key to success of JATAC

    A worldwide community of remote sensing experts came together at EGU 2023 in April to discuss the achievements of an atmosphere dynamics and composition field campaign completed over the tropical Atlantic. 

  • News - Success Stories

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    11 May 2023

    Global remote sensing of greenhouse gases ramps up

    With growing pressure to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, recent research studies using the carbon dioxide monitoring TanSat mission are timely.

  • News - Success Stories

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    8 May 2023

    PROBA-V data improve surface albedo products in Africa

    As ESA’s PROBA-V satellite marks its 10-year launch milestone, data tasked during the mission’s lifetime are still being used to assess changes in land cover.

  • News - Success Stories

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    28 Apr 2023

    ESA missions deliver new long-term perspective on sea ice decline

    A 29-year timeseries of polar sea ice thickness and volume that draws on altimetry data from a succession of ESA missions has been presented at the European Geoscience Union general assembly.

  • News - Success Stories

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    20 Apr 2023

    New cross-calibration readies PROBA-1 data for climate research

    While PROBA-1 has already exceeded expectations by suppling over 21 years of Earth observation hyperspectral data, recent cross-calibration activities are aiming to ensure the data will robustly serve long time-series research, even when the satellite ends operation.

  • News - Success Stories

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    4 Apr 2023

    Envisat data show how volcanoes communicate with each other

    Using radar data from ESA’s Envisat mission, scientists have recently proven the elastic interaction between two Hawaiian volcanoes.

  • News - Success Stories

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    1 Mar 2023

    Envisat delivers a decade of insights into ocean oil slicks

    More than ten years after it beamed its final image back to Earth, ESA’s Envisat satellite is still helping to investigate and address key societal and environmental challenges.

  • News - Success Stories

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    14 Feb 2023

    Space data unearths small-scale mining in Burkina Faso

    Satellite data from ESA’s Pléiades Third Party Mission and Copernicus Sentinel-2 were used to demonstrate that deep learning models can accurately and inexpensively identify artisanal and small-scale mining, even in challenging semi-desertic environments.

  • News - Success Stories

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    7 Feb 2023

    ESA’s wind mission helps investigate the nature of volcanic plumes

    An analysis that drew on wind profiles from ESA’s Aeolus mission has resulted in an unexpected discovery concerning the structure and behaviour of plumes emanating from the eruption of the Raikoke volcano in 2019.

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