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!
Only launched two months ago and still in the process of being commissioned for service, the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite has, remarkably, shown how its radar data can be used to map the shape of Earth’s land surface with extreme precision. These first cross-satellite ‘interferometry’ results assure its ability to monitor subsidence, uplift, glacier flow, and disasters such as landslides and earthquakes.
This cross-satellite interferogram is of the Atacama Desert plateau in northern Chile and was generated from images acquired just one day apart, by Sentinel-1A on 19 January and Sentinel-1C on 20 January. The ‘grey-scale amplitude’ radar image is for reference.
Read full story: Sentinel-1C demonstrates its power to map land deformation