The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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This interferogram is produced by combining two separate radar images of the same scene - in this case the area struck by the Bam earthquake in Iran, acquired December 2003 and February 2004. Combining the images in this way highlights alterations in the scene, with radar backscattered from these features having a different signal phase, manifesting in colourful interference patterns on the combined image known as fringes. These fringes can be used to measure tiny changes in the landscape occurring between images down to a maximum accuracy of a few millimetres, allowing geologists to see where faulting has occurred. For increased accuracy the spacecraft should return to as close as possible to the same point where the first image was taken - known as the baseline. For this acquisition a baseline of just 0.6 metres was achieved, due to very high precision spacecraft navigation.