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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
21 Sept 2023Rome 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
13 Sept 2023ESA 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
31 Aug 2023New 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
30 Aug 2023Synergy 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
22 Aug 2023Commercial 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
17 Aug 2023Commercial 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
17 July 2023Young 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
29 June 2023ESA 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
5 June 2023TPM 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
24 May 2023SMOS 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
23 May 2023Aeolus 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
12 May 2023Collaboration 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
11 May 2023Global 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
8 May 2023PROBA-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
28 Apr 2023ESA 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
20 Apr 2023New 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
4 Apr 2023Envisat 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
1 Mar 2023Envisat 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
14 Feb 2023Space 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
7 Feb 2023ESA’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.