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
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This video is based on data acquisitions from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission between 3 October and 31 October 2019. It remains constantly centred on the Polarstern (bright dot starting at the centre of the grid). Polarstern is a German research icebreaker spending a year trapped and drifting in the Arctic sea ice so that scientists from around the world can study the Arctic as the epicentre of global warming and gain fundamental insights that are key to better understand global climate change. The video shows how the initial grid distorts over time by the uneven ice drift over time within the grid array. This results in opening (ice divergence) and closing (ice compression and ridging), shear and vorticity. This shear caused a massive crack to form through the experiment ice floe, disrupting the experiments and forcing movement of some of the instrumentation.