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 topicThe GOME-2 instrument scans across the satellite track. Each scan back and forth takes just six seconds; therefore, with a scan-width of 1920-kilometres, global coverage can be achieved within one day. The data collected by GOME-2 provides vertical profiles or total column amounts for each of the gases (ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, other trace gases) and ultraviolet radiation. These profiles are representative of the lowermost 50 kilometres of the Earth's atmosphere.
As with the data being received by GOME on ERS-2, these data are crucial for monitoring stratospheric ozone and atmospheric pollutants to keep a check on the health of the Earth's atmosphere. However, GOME-2 is more advanced than GOME as it observes four times smaller ground pixels (80 km x 40 km), it has better polarisation and the calibration processes have been improved.