Europe

A nearly cloud-free view of Europe, part of a global mosaic of Proba-V images acquired on 9 March.

Our green continent is depicted at a resolution of 333 m, with snow capping the peaks of the Pyrenees and Alps bordering Italy.

Proba-V is a miniaturised ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.

The camera’s continent-spanning 2250 km field of view collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands, ideal for monitoring plant and forest growth as well as inland water bodies.

Proba-V images are processed and distributed to hundreds of scientific end users by VITO, Belgium's Flemish Institute for Technological Research, extending the dataset of previous generations of the Vegetation instrument flown on the Spot-4 and Spot-5 satellites.

Image credit: ESA/VITO