ESA provides free satellite images

PARIS, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency has opened a Web site that gives access to images acquired by the world's largest Earth observation satellite -- Envisat.

The MIRAVI Web site -- esa.int/miravi -- tracks Envisat (the European Environmental Satellite) around the globe, generating images from the raw data collected by Envisat's optical instrument and providing them online within two hours. The ESA said MIRAVI is free and requires no registration.

"ESA designed MIRAVI so that the public could have access to daily views of Earth," said Volker Liebig, director of the ESA's Earth observation programs. "Naturally, scientists are already familiar with these data but we thought these images would be interesting to everyone. Seeing the most recently acquired images of the planet will allow people to witness the magnificent beauty of Earth and become more knowledgeable about the environment."

Since its launch in 2002, Envisat has continuously monitored the Earth's land, atmosphere, oceans and ice caps from a polar orbit at an approximate 500-mile altitude, acquiring global coverage every three days.