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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ESA started working on global land-cover with the launch of Envisat, producing first GlobCover2005 and then GlobCover2009, under the GlobCover initiative.
Started in 2005 in partnership with JRC, EEA, FAO, UNEP, GOFC-GOLD and IGBP, the initiative aimed to develop a service capable of delivering global composites and land-cover maps using observations from the 300 m resolution MERIS sensor on Envisat.
This image shows the Climate Change Initiative 300 m resolution annual global land-cover time series from 1992 to 2015. This unique dataset was produced thanks to the reprocessing and the interpretation of five different satellite missions.