About ESA
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.
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Space in Member States
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Spain
Estonia
Finland
France
Greece
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
Norway
The Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Czechia
Romania
United Kingdom
Slovenia
Sweden
Switzerland
Science & Exploration
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Enabling & Support
Making space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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What A Wonderful World?
General presentation of ERS-1. The video includes:
- 01:02 View taken by ERS-1 of land
- 01:27 shorts video clips of air-polluted city, deforestation, queues of cars, factories, melting ice, flooding, desert, ships, ice-landscape, landscapes, waves, volcanic eruption, oil-rig fires,
- 04:00 animation of landscape and clouds
- 04:28 the Earth as a planet
- 05:00 launch of a generic satellite illustrating observing Earth from a satellite being the easiest way of monitoring changes on the Earth, with some generic intro on Earth monitoring satellites
- 05:18 European Remote Sensing Satellite ERS-1.
- 05:32 ERS-1 was launch 17 July 1991
- 06:04 Overall presentation of ERS-1, with video animation illustrating its functionality
- 07:48 ERS-1 instruments and their description. 3 radar instruments (Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Wind Scatterometer, Radar Altimeter(RA) ) and 2 passive instruments (Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR), Microwave Radiometer).
- 08:30 Size of data acquired by ERS-1
- 08:48 ESA Ground Station Kiruna
- 09:02 For the first time civilian ships were taking the north passage over Russia.
- 09:27 Waters and ice situation were monitored by the ERS-1 SAR used to guide the ships. The ice maps generated by ERS-1 SAR were used to find the path through, illustrated a practical example of the use of the SAR
- 09:53 Different ERS images on seas and coastal lines
- 10:21 Oil spill spotted near French Cote da’sur
- 10:26 Amazone zone showing areas of forest being cleared
- 10:38 Geological maps
- 10:44 Date processing of ERS-1 data produces 3-d images
- 11:17 Animation of ERS-1 over Earth
- 11:28 More images
- 12:15 Ships at sea, high waves
- 12:43 Geologist working on interpreting the images, at PCs
- 13:40 Radar Altimeter explanation
- 15:55 Green house gasses, with CO2 maps
- 16:17 ERS Microwave Radiometer used to calibrate other ERS-1 instruments
- 16:38 ERS-1 ground section description
- 19:00 Environmental changes and how ERS-1 can help to understand this better
