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 image of Europe is a composite of Proba-V images from 1–10 May 2014. Launched just over a year ago, the washing machine-sized satellite carries the Vegetation imager designed after the French Spot-Vegetation mission, flown on the Spot-4 and Spot-5 satellites.
Spot-Vegetation marked 16 years of service in May, and has now passed the torch to its European counterpart.
Proba-V maps land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days. The data can also be used for day-by-day tracking of extreme weather, alerting authorities to crop failures, monitoring inland water resources and tracing the steady spread of deserts and deforestation.