The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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This is a mosaic made up of true colour images acquired during March 2003 using three out of 15 MERIS spectral bands taken from Envisat in polar orbit at an altitude of 800 km, with data combined from around 500 separate orbital segments with the intention of minimising cloud cover as much as possible. The image has a 1.2 km resolution and is made up of 40,000 by 20,000 pixels, equal to 2.5 gigabytes of output data.