Proba-V

A briefcase-sized CubeSat being flown on Europe’s next Vega launcher this week will gather 340 km wide views of Earth’s vegetation growth, employing a spectral imager originally designed for ESA’s decade-in-flight Proba-V.

ESA’s cubic-metre-sized Proba-V minisatellite will soon end its nearly seven-year global mission to monitor the daily growth of all Earth’s vegetation. As Copernicus Sentinel-3 takes on this task instead, Proba-V will be free to perform experimental monitoring over Europe and Africa – including co-observations with new companion missions.

The rapid evolution of Egypt’s Nile Delta over the last four years, as viewed from ESA’s Proba-V microsatellite. Think of it as a small token of our love for planet Earth: just a cubic metre in size, Proba-V maps land cover and vegetation growth across the entire world every two days.

ESA is challenging ‘citizen scientists’ to apply the latest AI and image processing techniques to upscale images acquired by the Earth-watching Proba-V minisatellite.

Springtime in Europe

Proba-V passes the torch

Fire captured by Proba-V

Estonia, acquired by ESA's Proba-V satellite

Launch transmission - Vega VV02 deployment of remaining two payloads