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!
Launched just seven months ago, ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite has been proving how the New Space approach can accelerate the development of missions capable of delivering detailed temperature and humidity profiles for short-term weather forecasts. Moreover, the impact of this small prototype satellite goes even further – remarkably, its measuring instrument has been recognised as able to provide data on par with traditional large missions.
The graph illustrates the estimated contribution of various passive microwave instruments to short-range forecast accuracy within the ECMWF system, based on an approximate measure of Forecast Sensitivity of the Observation Impact. It highlights that the Arctic Weather Satellite's impact is comparable to that of instruments on larger platforms.
Read full story: Arctic Weather Satellite hailed as excellent