Goodbye Envisat
09 May 2012
After 10 years of impressive work, Envisat’s mission has now ended.
Communication with the satellite was interrupted on 8 April. Unfortunately engineers have not been able to re-establish contact with it since then.
The Envisat team is trying to understand the satellite’s condition, using images from ground radar and the French Pleiades satellite. It will continue trying to re-establish contact with Envisat for the next two months.
Envisat’s 10 instruments have given us a wealth of information about our planet. It has witnessed the shrinking of Arctic sea ice, air pollution increase in Asia, and variations in the Antarctica ozone hole.
Envisat’s images were used to study the effects of deforestation and to improve our understanding of earthquakes and volcanoes.
The precious data sent to Earth by Envisat will be missed by its user community. The launch of the Sentinel satellites, which are Envisat’s successors, is now seen as even more urgent.
