Envisat fast facts

Size

• Envisat is the size of an articulated truck
• 10m x 4m x 4m with solar panel and ASAR stowed
• 25m x 7m x 10m with solar panel and ASAR deployed

Weight

• 8200 kg at launch
• includes 300 kg hydrazine fuel for orbit control thrusters

Power

• solar array generates 6.6 kW of electricity after five years in orbit

Orbit

• orbits Earth every 100 minutes at altitude 800 km
• global coverage every 3 days (for most instrument)
• exact repeat coverage every 35 days

Lifetime

• 5 years design life
• both ESA's previous Earth Observation Satellites ERS-1 and 2 significantly exceeded their design lifetimes

Instruments

• ten instruments observing Earth
• in wavelengths from 0.2 micrometer to 10 cm

Data gathering

• Envisat will collect 1 Petabyte (10¹⁵ bytes) of data over its lifetime
• enough to fill the hard disk drivers of a million desktop PCs

Datalinks

• 2 x 100 Mbit/s links via European Data Relay Satellite
• 2 x 100 Mbit/s direct downlinks to ground receiving stations
• each link 2000 times faster than a standard computer modem

Data storage

• 160 Gbits total data storage on board
• enough for 1.6 million square kilometres of SAR imagery plus one complete orbit of data from all the other sensors

Construction

• satellite built by consortium of 50 companies led by Astrium
• ground segment built by consortium of 20 companies led by Alcatel Space Industries

Launcher

• Arianne-5 launch vehicle from Europe's Spaceport Guyana Space Centre

Cost

• 2 billion Euro over 15 years
• works out at 7 Euro per citizen per ESA member nations or about 1 cup of coffee each a year

Participating states

• Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom