Four weeks after Envisat's launch, all antennas were deployed and its instruments were pointing accurately towards the Earth. ESA's ground controllers and engineers spent the middle of March 2002 powering up the satellite and the instruments on board.
One by one, the ten instruments were switched on , and then calibrated and verified. These activities are essential to guarantee the quality of the data that ESA provides to the end user. Global data is recorded on board the satellite and is downlinked once per orbit to the Kiruna station in North Sweden, for immediate data processing.
Further tuning of data takes place at ESA's ESRIN Establishment in Frascati, Italy. It is here that ENVISAT's first results are being viewed by an enthusiastic scientific team. This first sight of ENVISAT data already shows the powerful synergy offered by the combination of instruments, which give new dimensions and opportunities for global and regional environment monitoring.

A-Roll Script
10:00:40
The Earth's major new health-check began just after midnight on the 1st March 2002 when ENVISAT, Europe's highly sophisticated global monitoring satellite was launched by an Ariane 5 launcher from Kourou space centre, French Guyana.
Launch from L-30
Using actual sound & commentary
After a successful launch, ENVISAT is now getting ready to start observing the earth, providing measurements of the atmosphere, ocean, land and ice over its planned five-year mission.
One hour into the launch, the 65 m2 solar array was successfully deployed and is now providing ENVISAT with the required energy from the sun. All antennas are also fully deployed and thanks to the start sensors, the satellite is accurately pointing its instruments towards the Earth.
SoundBits
""Well I can tell you it has been a very tense preparation period, we have been rehearsing the launch for a year and as we went into the launch operations we were all very excited, it was all very tense and at that point in