German satellite sends images of Bosphorus

BONN

The German environmental satellite mission Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) has delivered its first images a month after its launch.

As part of the mission, which is managed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), EnMAP has recorded a strip about 30 kilometers wide and 180 kilometers long over Istanbul.

The images show a high density of chlorophyll covering the Bosphorus, which separates the continents of Europe and Asia. Chlorophyll is the green substance in plants that allows them to use the energy from the sun.

The mission is only in the first phase, in which the instrument will be calibrated and precisely adjusted.

“These first images give us a very good foretaste of what scientists around the world can expect. They show that EnMAP can make a major contribution to showing the consequences of climate change,” EnMAP Project Manager Sebastian Fischer said.

After the mission had successfully completed the launch and early orbit phases, the individual subsystems of the highly complex hyperspectral instrument were gradually put into operation.