Due to a delay in the delivery of auxiliary data all the CryoSat near real time production (i.e. FDM, NRT and NOP data) may be suffering from degraded quality starting from validity date 22 April 2020.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. For Earth-observing satellites, every day is Earth Day. While news of COVID-19 dominates headlines and many of us practice social distancing, there still remains the need for action on climate change – and satellites are vital in providing the key facts on this global issue.  

ESA's vegetation-monitoring mission - Proba-V - will end operations in June 2020 after seven years. In honour of the occasion, and as the anniversary of the launch in May 2013 approaches, we took the occasion to summarise this minisatellite and its achievements in an infographic.

We are all too aware that COVID-19 is a serious threat to health, is putting huge pressure on healthcare systems and it could leave the global economy struggling for years to come. With lockdown measures in force across the globe, the pandemic is also affecting aspects of everyday life that may not be so obvious. The drop in commercial flights, for example, has led to fewer measurements for weather forecasts, but fortunately, ESA's Aeolus satellite mission is helping to fill the gap.

Due to a planned software maintenance, the ESA On-The-Fly (OTF) Earth Observation products dissemination infrastructure will be unavailable according to the following schedule:

• Third Party Missions data dissemination – Wednesday 22 April 2020 from 09:00 to 10:00 CEST
• ERS and Envisat (A)SAR data dissemination – Wednesday 22 April 2020 from 10:00 to 12:30 CEST
• SMOS data dissemination - Thursday 23 April 2020 from 09:00 to 10:00 CEST

The current Earth Online website, which has been around for some 30 years as the main provider of scientific-technical information on Earth Observation (EO) activities carried out by ESA, is due to change—on 27 April it will take on a whole new dimension.

Due to a planned software maintenance, the ESA On-The-Fly (OTF) GOCE and ALOS PALSAR products dissemination infrastructure will be unavailable on Monday 20 April 2020.

The European Space Agency (ESA), the Institut Français pour la Recherche et l'Exploitation de la MER (IFREMER) and the French company OceanDataLab are pleased to announce a new operational service called "SMOS Wind Data Service" which provides, in near real time (NRT), surface wind speed over the ocean derived from the brightness temperature measurements of the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission.

With an outbreak of wildfires recently threatening the closed Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine, the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service has been activated and the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission has imaged the fires and smoke, and mapped the resulting area of burned ground.

Further analyses are showing the continued low levels of nitrogen dioxide concentrations across Europe – coinciding with lockdown measures implemented to stop the spread of the coronavirus. New data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, from the European Union Copernicus programme, show some cities seeing levels fall by 45—50% compared to the same period last year.