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

Weight

• 8200 kg at launch
• Includes 300 kg of 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 an altitude of 800 km
• Global coverage every 3 days (for most instruments)
• Exact repeat coverage every 35 days

Lifetime

• 5 years expected lifetime (already exceeded)
• Both of ESA's previous Earth observation satellites, ERS-1 and 2, significantly exceeded their expected lifetimes

Instruments

• Ten instruments observe the Earth
• In wavelengths from 0.2 micrometres to 10 cm

Data gathering

• Envisat will collect 1 Petabyte (10¹⁵ bytes) of data over its entire lifetime
• Enough to fill the hard disk drives 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 onboard
• 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

• Ariane-5 launch vehicle from Europe’s Spaceport, Guyana Space Centre.

Cost

• 2 billion Euro over 15 years
• Equivalent of 7 Euro per citizen for each ESA member state 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