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 animation is comprised of Envisat ASAR mosaics of the Arctic Ocean for 2005, 2006 and 2007 and highlights the changes in sea ice. The ice-free areas appear as dark gray and the sea ice areas as light gray.
The data in each yearly mosaic were acquired between 1 and 11 September by ASAR working in Global Monitoring Mode with a spatial resolution of 1 km.
Note the exceptionally large ice-free area extending from the Siberia coast up to the vicinity of the North Pole in the 2007 mosaic.
Each mosaic contains approximately 200 Envisat images processed by the Earth Observation G-POD (Grid Processing On Demand) operated at ESA/ESRIN. G-POD is a powerful GRID-based environment coupled with large online archives of Earth Observation data products.