Earth Day: Taking the pulse of our planet

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. For Earth-observing satellites, every day is Earth Day. While news of COVID-19 dominates headlines and many of us practice social distancing, there still remains the need for ...

Ending global plant tracking, Proba-V assigned new focus

ESA's cubic-metre-sized Proba-V minisatellite will soon end its nearly seven-year global mission to monitor the daily growth of all Earth's vegetation. As Copernicus Sentinel-3 takes on this task instead, Proba-V will be ...

Image: Astronaut captures the fires ravaging Australia

Another pair of eyes provides a sobering perspective on the fires ravaging Australia. ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano took images such as this one on 12 January from his vantage point of the International Space Station.

New biomass map to take stock of the world's carbon

The first of a series of global maps aimed at quantifying change in carbon stored as biomass across the world's forests and shrublands has been released today by ESA's Climate Change Initiative at COP25—the United Nation ...

35-year data record charts sea-temperature change

Four trillion satellite measurements, taken over four decades from 1981 to 2018, have been merged to create a continuous global record that will help to understand the science behind Earth's climate.

Forests emit carbon dioxide during heatwaves

Forests absorb a lot of CO2 from the air in the summer, but during the heat wave at the end of July, forests in the Netherlands emitted CO2. This is shown by measurements taken by the University of Twente.

Monitoring air pollution from fires

The wildfires that have been devastating the Amazon rainforest have been international headline news over the last weeks. These fires are not only an environmental tragedy in terms of lost forest and biodiversity, but they ...

How satellites can improve the health of city dwellers

Most people get a health boost from exercise. But for those with heart disease or a lung condition such as asthma, exercising during periods of high urban air pollution can exacerbate rather than improve their condition.

Mission control 'saves science'

Every minute, ESA's Earth observation satellites gather dozens of gigabytes of data about our planet—enough information to fill the pages on a 100-metre long bookshelf. Flying in low-Earth orbits, these spacecraft are continuously ...

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