Envisat, launched on 28 February 2002, is the biggest satellite ever built in Europe. Four years after its entry into service, ESA asked leading scientists to assess the achievements of this mission.
Their comments, together with new Envisat imagery and animations plus background footage, have been edited into two ESA TV Exchanges.
Today's transmission covers Envisat achievements in the field of climate change. The second Exchange will be transmitted next week, covering public safety.
The Exchange is made of an A-roll of 4 minutes with English voiceover (split audio) plus a B-roll with clean international sound.
The soundbites are in English plus in the B-roll, in the scientists' mother tongue.
The scientists include:
John Burrows, University of Bremen
David Llewellyn-Jones, University of Leicester
Pierre-Yves Le Traon, Ifremer Brest
Helmut Rott, University of Innsbruck
Ulrich Platt, University of Heidelberg

ENVISAT VNR ñ Global Environment
10:00:40 Voice over: Since its launch in 2002 Envisat, Europeís environmental satellite, has played a key role in Earth observation. Envisat is the largest Earth observation satellite ever built. It has nine instruments on board and offers a unique synergy between radar and optical observation. Over 1,000 scientific projects currently use Envisat, and the number is rising at a rate of 20 or 30 a month. These include commercial and public safety projects as well as studies of the atmospheric changes to the planet.
Within days of its launch Envisat made an important observation about ice break up on the Larson shelf in Antarctica.
10:01:27 Helmut Rott There were two rapid events when several thousand kilometres square of ice shelf broke up within a few days. The experience from Larsen shows the glaciers dammed by the ice shelves are more vulnerable than we thought before.
10:01:45 Voice over: Envisat has also played a central role in observin