About ESA
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.
Highlights
Latest
Space in Member States
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Spain
Estonia
Finland
France
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Norway
The Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Czechia
Romania
United Kingdom
Slovenia
Sweden
Switzerland
Science & Exploration
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicAstronauts
Latest
Enabling & Support
Making space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicLatest
Close up of the South Central Pacific Ocean
In this area, where some icebergs drifted across the Antarctic Exclusion Zone, the AEZ (thick black line) was fixed on 17 December, thanks to the Copernicus Sentinel-1 SAR coverage a few days before the passage of the leader. Nearly one month later, around mid-January, some icebergs had drifted north of the AEZ. Given the expected long time-span between the passages of the first and last yachts in that area, this area was regularly monitored with additional RADARSAT-2 SAR images, and the last skippers were informed in due time of the presence of these icebergs.
Notably, Alexia Barrier (TSE-4MYPLANET, blue trajectory) largely bypassed that area. Copernicus Sentinel-1 and RADARSAT-2 footprints are in white and black respectively. The detected icebergs are the blue snowflakes, while their model-drifted positions are the green snowflakes. Orange rectangles indicate areas with significant probability of presence of icebergs.
