ESA

Agency or Program

European Space Agency

Description The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Main Website http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html
CPD/CB Link
  • ESA Education - General and preparatory materials
  • Professional Education - See the resources below
Principal Contact Jerome Benveniste - Jerome.Benveniste at esa.int
Activity Summary The European Space Agency is organizing a new series of regular advanced thematic training courses. These trainings - covering initially ocean, land and atmosphere applications - are hosted in European Universities, with the host country rotating among the ESA Member States.  The series began with the Ocean Remote Sensing Course (see below) and will continue in 2007 with a Land Course in Portugal (see the Training Workshops schedule, also below).  The ESRIN Summer Schools and the Dragon programme are also major components of ESA capacity building.
Resources
  • Training Workshops - schedule for numerous upcoming opportunities
  • Ocean Remote Sensing: Methods, Tools & Applications - General and specific lecture materials from a previous workshop, including Ocean Colour, MERIS, BEAM, ASAR, AATSR, SST
  • The ESA ENVISAT Summer Schools are held in ESRIN (near Rome, Italy) from end July through mid-August.  Courses cover a broad spectrum of research issues related to the Monitoring and Modelling of the Earth System - including the ocean, atmosphere, biosphere and cryosphere - with a cross cutting focus on data assimilation techniques, illustrating how they maximize the scientific and economic value of earth observation data.  Previous years' programs and abstracts are provided in an archive.
  • ESA-NRSCC Dragon Cooperation Programme - ESA, together with the National Remote Sensing Centre of China (NRSCC), an entity under the Ministry of Science and Technology of the P.R. China, have cooperated in the field of Earth observation application development for the last ten years.  An intensive, multi-year training program is profiled here, with links to materials presented at previous workshops.
  • Basic Radar Altimetry Toolbox (BRAT) - ESA and CNES have announced the release of tBRAT, a set of software and information dedicated to radar altimetry satellites, developed by CLS.   http://www.altimetry.info or http://earth.esa.int/brat/ (mirror sites).  [Editors' Note:  Preliminary examination of this package indicates that it includes extremely detailed training materials]