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 provides an in-depth look at ESA's CryoSat mission. The CryoSat satellite is a radar altimetry mission designed to observe polar regions and continental glaciers. It will monitor the thickness of land ice and sea ice and help explain the connection between the melting of the polar ice and the rise in sea levels and how this is contributing to climate change.to provide data on the thickness of the Earth's continental ice sheets and marine sea ice cover. Ice sheets have a central role in the global climate. Its main payload is an instrument called Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radar Altimeter (SIRAL). The satellite will be launched on a Rockot vehicle from Plesetsk in Russia in autumn 2005. Soundbites are provided by CryoSat Lead Investigator Pr. Duncan Wingham from University College London, who proposed the mission in 1997/98.