Envisat fast facts

08 ΦΕΒ. 2002 1860

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

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