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News - Thematic area articles
How satellite data empower sustainable urban growth
Earth observation is a vital tool for facilitating the sustainable development of the world's cities, helping to ensure that urban centres keep spurring collaboration, innovation and opportunity as they continue to expand.
News - Maintenance News
ESA EO data dissemination - Maintenance on 26-27 April 2023
A planned software maintenance activity will affect all of the ESA EO data dissemination OADS systems on Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 April 2023.
Document - Newsletter
Earth-Online-Newsletter-17-February-2023
This issue of the Earth Online Newsletter covers a selection of the latest news and events from ESA.
News - General News
International collaboration: Summarising ESA’s Third Party Missions
ESA’s Third Party Missions programme consists of more than 50 missions from around the world. Learn more about the Third Party Missions in this video.
News - Data Release news
New Landsat RBV data collection opened to users
ESA is pleased to announce that the Landsat RBV data collection has been opened to users.
News - General News
Long-term data: Summarising ESA’s Heritage missions
ESA’s Heritage Space Programme preserves data from non-operational missions. Learn more about the Heritage missions in this video.
News - Data Release news
New collections available: Cloud Free Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-7 ETM+ European and Mediterranean Countries
Two new data collections, Landsat-5 TM Cloud Free and Landsat-7 ETM Cloud Free collections, are available through the ESA Third Party Missions programme.
Data - Data Description
Landsat 7 ETM + European and Mediterranean Countries Cloud Free Collection
This dataset contains the cloud-free products from Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper collection acquired over Europe, North Africa and middle East; for each scene only one product is selected, with the minimal cloud coverage. The Landsat 7 ETM+ scenes typically cover 185 x 170 km. A standard full scene is nominally centred on the intersection between a Path and Row (the actual image centre can vary by up to 100m). The data are system corrected.
Data - Data Description
Landsat 5 TM European and Mediterranean Countries Cloud Free Collection
This dataset contains the cloud-free products from Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper collection acquired over Europe, North Africa and middle East; for each scene only one product is selected, with the minimal cloud coverage. The acquired Landsat TM scene covers approximately 183 x 172.8 km. A standard full scene is nominally centred on the intersection between a path and row (the actual image centre can vary by up to 100 m). The data are system corrected.
News - Data Release news
Full European Landsat data collection now available under the same catalogue
The Full European Landsat data collection, from Landsat-1 to Landsat-8, is now available under the same catalogue
News - Success Stories
Heritage data trains neural networks to detect urban sprawl
Using data from non-operational ESA remote sensing missions, researchers have trained a network of artificial neurons to recognise how cities change over decades. They hope this will help city planners reduce the impact that urbanisation has on the environment.
Event - Training
EO Summer School 3
ESA's series of summer schools, on Monitoring of the Earth System, aims to promote the exploitation of Earth observation data.
Event - Conference
Living Planet Symposium 2022
Learn about the 2022 edition of ESA's Living Planet Symposium.
Document - General Reference
Heritage Space Programme interactive brochure
Learn about ESA's Heritage Space Programme in this interactive brochure.
News - Events and Proceedings
National missions in the spotlight at the Living Planet Symposium
In the framework of ESA’s Third Party Missions (TPM) programme, the agency offers access to the full data archives of almost 50 satellite missions, which are owned by organisations around the world.
Document - General Reference
Heritage Missions brochure
This brochure describes ESA's Heritage Space Programme and includes infographics describing some of the missions in the programme.
News - Data Release news
New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data now available
Within ESA’s Landsat offering, access to the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data is now available.
Data - Data Description
Landsat 8 Collection 2 European Coverage
This dataset contains the European Coverage of Landsat-8 Collection 2 data, both Level 1 and Level 2, since the beginning of the mission. Landsat-8 Collection 2 is the result of reprocessing effort on the archive and on fresh products with significant improvement with respect to Collection 1 on data quality, obtained by means of advancements in data processing and algorithm development. The primary characteristic is a relevant improvement in the absolute geolocation accuracy (now re-baselined to the European Space Agency Copernicus Sentinel-2 Global Reference Image, GRI) but includes also updated digital elevation modelling sources, improved Radiometric Calibration (even correction for the TIRS striping effect), enhanced Quality Assessment Bands, updated and consistent metadata files and usage of Cloud Optimized Georeferenced (COG) Tagged Image File Format. Landsat-8 level 1 products combine data from the 2 Landsat instruments, OLI and TIRS. The level 1 products generated can be either L1TP or L1GT: L1TP - Level 1 Precision Terrain (Corrected) (L1T) products: Radiometrically calibrated and orthorectified using ground control points (GCPs) and digital elevation model (DEM) data to correct for relief displacement. The highest quality Level-1 products suitable for pixel-level time series analysis. GCPs used for L1TP correction are derived from the Global Land Survey 2000 (GLS2000) data set. L1GT - Level 1 Systematic Terrain (Corrected) (L1GT) products: L1GT data products consist of L0 product data with systematic radiometric, geometric and terrain corrections applied and resampled for registration to a cartographic projection, referenced to the WGS84, G873, or current version. The dissemination server contains three different classes of Level1 products Real Time (RT): Newly acquired Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS data are processed upon downlink but use an initial TIRS line-of-sight model parameters; the data is made available in less than 12 hours (4-6 hours typically). Once the data have been reprocessed with the refined TIRS parameters, the products are transitioned to either Tier 1 or Tier 2 and removed from the Real-Time tier (in 14-16 days). Tier 1 (T1): Landsat scenes with the highest available data quality are placed into Tier 1 and are considered suitable for time-series analysis. Tier 1 includes Level-1 Precision and Terrain (L1TP) corrected data that have well-characterized radiometry and are inter-calibrated across the different Landsat instruments. The georegistration of Tier 1 scenes is consistent and within prescribed image-to-image tolerances of ≦ 12-meter radial root mean square error (RMSE). Tier 2 (T2): Landsat scenes not meeting Tier 1 criteria during processing are assigned to Tier 2. Tier 2 scenes adhere to the same radiometric standard as Tier 1 scenes, but do not meet the Tier 1 geometry specification due to less accurate orbital information (specific to older Landsat sensors), significant cloud cover, insufficient ground control, or other factors. This includes Systematic Terrain (L1GT) and Systematic (L1GS) processed data. Landsat-8 level 2 products are generated from L1GT and L1TP Level 1 products that meet the <76 degrees Solar Zenith Angle constraint and include the required auxiliary data inputs to generate a scientifically viable product. The data are available a couple of days after the Level1 T1/T2. The level 2 products generated can be L2SP or L2SR: L2SP - Level 2 Science Products (L2SP) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), Surface Temperature (ST), ST intermediate bands, an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands. L2SR - Level 2 Surface Reflectance (L2SR) products: include Surface Reflectance (SR), an angle coefficients file, and Quality Assessment (QA) Bands; it is generated if ST could not be generated Two different categories of Level 1 products are offered: LC with Optical, Thermal and Quality Map images, LO with Optical and Quality Map images (Thermal not available). For the Level 2 data, only LC combined products are generated
News - Data Release news
New Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 data available from January
From the beginning of 2022, ESA will start the distribution of the European coverage of Landsat-8 Collection-2 Level 1 and Level 2 products.
Activity - Projects
SAFE (Standard Archive Format for Europe)
SAFE is a long-term preservation data format designed to act as a common format for archiving and conveying data within ESA Earth Observation archiving facilities.