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World Water Day: space tool aids fight for clean drinking water

22 March 2006

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A Bangladeshi girl collects drinking water from a hole in the ground in Dhaka 22 March 2006, on the World Water Day. The United Nations warned that trouble caused by the world's dwindling supply of fresh water goes far beyond perpetual thirst for billions around the globe. "Freshwater shortages are likely to trigger increased environmental damage over the next 15 years," noted the UN Environmental Program's Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA) report, based on the input of 1,500 experts worldwide.

Credits: AFP PHOTO/Shafiq Alam

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The Amazon River Basin as observed by ERS-1 Radar Altimeter, including so-called 'wet'radar echoes from rivers, lakes and swamps. Radar altimetry data provides researchers with the means to monitor global river and lake levels.

Credits: ESA

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This image of African land cover comes from a mosaic of Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) images acquired during the month of May 2004.

Credits: ESA

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The launch of the CryoSat spacecraft was unfortunately aborted on 8 October 2005 due to a malfunction of its Rockot launcher, which resulted in the total loss of the spacecraft.

At the latest meeting of the European Space Agency's Earth Observation Programme Board, which took place at ESA’s Headquarters in Paris on 23 and 24 February 2006, ESA received the green light from its Member States to build and launch a CryoSat recovery mission, CryoSat-2.

Credits: AOES - Medialab