The landscapes of Ireland, Great Britain and northern France are pictured in this rare cloud-free view, acquired by ESA's Envisat on 28 March 2012. Image: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The landscapes of Ireland, Great Britain and northern France are pictured in this rare cloud-free view, acquired by ESA’s Envisat on 28 March 2012.
Image: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Launched on 1 March 2002 on an Ariane-5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in French Guyana, Envisat was the largest Earth observation spacecraft ever built. The eight-tonne satellite orbited Earth more than 50 000 times over 10 years – twice its planned lifetime. The mission delivered thousands of images and a wealth of data used to study the workings of the Earth system, including insights into factors contributing to climate change. The end of the mission was declared on 9 May 2012, but ten  years of Envisat’s archived data continues to be exploited for studying our planet.

With immediate effect, all 476 public Envisat MERIS or ASAR or AATSR images are released under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO licence, hence the credit for all images is: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO. Follow this link.