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 topicThis video begins with a brief introduction of climate change and introduces ERS-1 (launched July 1999) as an Earth observation satellite that can help scientists understand better the global processes that affect our climate and environment. The rest of the video details the calibration and validation techniques used to ensure the quality of ERS-1 data. Rather than calibrate the instruments in space, the techniques were applied to data received from the Synthetic Aperture Radar, Wind Scatterometer, Radar altimeter and ATSR instruments. Some of the techniques involved various transponders at ground stations across Europe, aircraft and oil platforms. Calibration results are given in detail.