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
Go to topicA forecast of September 2004's emerging ozone hole, as seen by ESA's Envisat environmental satellite. Ozone forecasting is available based on near-real time observations from the Envisat instrument Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Cartography (SCIAMACHY), which are inputted into a data assimilation program which provides near-real time ozone fields for today and a forecast for the coming days. The forecast is available through a project called Tropospheric Emission Monitoring Internet Service (TEMIS). The image represents ozone thickness in Dobson Units (DUs), which stands for the total thickness of ozone in a given vertical column if it were concentrated into a single slab at standard temperature and atmospheric pressure – 400 DUs is equivalent to a thickness of four millimetres, for example.