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The Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) is a German hyperspectral satellite mission that aims at monitoring and characterising the Earth’s environment on a global scale. EnMAP serves to measure and model key dynamic processes of the Earth’s ecosystems by extracting geochemical, biochemical and biophysical parameters, which provide information on the status and evolution of various terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

The Earth Explorer – Fluorescence Explorer (FLEX) mission will map vegetation fluorescence to quantify photosynthetic activity.

Information from FLEX will improve our understanding of the way carbon moves between plants and the atmosphere and how photosynthesis affects the carbon and water cycles.

In addition, information from FLEX will lead to better insight into plant health and stress. This is of particular relevance since the growing global population is placing increasing demands on the production of food and animal feed.

JUICE – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is the first large-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. Planned for launch in 2022 and arrival at Jupiter in 2029, it will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and three of its largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

The RapidEye constellation of five Earth Observation satellites has been in operation since February of 2009. The system images a 77 kilometre wide swath, which collects more than five million square kilometres of earth every day for its.  RapidEye’s sensors produce imagery in five spectral bands (Red, Green, Blue, Red Edge and Near Infrared). Over 70% of RapidEye’s imagery has a view angle of less than 10°, as the view angle of RapidEye imagery is always less than 20°. The system also has the capability for daily revisit to any point on earth. Each of the five satellites are identically calibrated so that images between satellites are indistinguishable from each other.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission comprises a constellation of two polar-orbiting satellites placed in the same sun-synchronous orbit, phased at 180° to each other. It aims at monitoring variability in land surface conditions, and its wide swath width (290 km) and high revisit time (10 days at the equator with one satellite, and 5 days with 2 satellites under cloud-free conditions which results in 2-3 days at mid-latitudes) will support monitoring of Earth’s surface changes. The coverage limits are from between latitudes 56° south and 84° north.

The Sentinel-4 mission focuses on monitoring of trace gas concentrations and aerosols in the atmosphere to support operational services covering air-quality near-real time applications, air-quality protocol monitoring and climate protocol monitoring. The specific objective of Sentinel-4 is to support this with a high revisit time over Europe. The Sentinel-4/UVN instrument is a high resolution spectrometer system operating with 3 designated bands in the solar reflectance spectrum, covering the ultraviolet (305-400 nm), visible (400-500 nm) and near-infrared (750-775 nm) bands. The central Sentinel-4/UVN instrument parameters are a spatial sampling of 8 km over Europe and a fast repeat cycle over Europe and North Africa (Sahara) of 60 minutes.

The Sentinel-5 mission focuses on monitoring of trace gas concentrations and aerosols in the atmosphere to support operational services covering air-quality near-real time applications, air-quality protocol monitoring and climate protocol monitoring.