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 topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
Southwest England and the English Channel from Sentinel-1. The effects of wind along the Devon and Dorset shorelines are particularly striking. Where the sea is flat it appears black and this is down to the sheltering effects of the land or the funnelling effect of small valleys along the coastline. The gusty nature of the wind is apparent as small-scale structures to the southwest of Devon. Sentinel-1’s synthetic aperture radar can be considered a 'super-scatterometer', providing information on the wind speed and structure at a higher resolution than traditional satellite scatterometers used for observing wind at the sea surface.