CryoSat is an ESA programme which will monitor variations in the extent and thickness of polar ice through use of a satellite in low Earth orbit. The information provided about the behaviour of coastal glaciers that drain thinning ice sheets will be key to better predictions of future sea-level rise.

The CryoSat-1 spacecraft was lost in a launch failure in 2005, however the programme was resumed with the successful launch of a replacement, CryoSat-2, launched on 8 April 2010.

CryoSat-2 is a European Space Agency environmental research satellite which was launched in April 2010. It provides scientists with data about the polar ice caps and tracks changes in the thickness of the ice with a resolution of about ¹⁄₂ inches (1.3 cm). This information is useful for monitoring climate change. Cryosat 2 was built as a replacement for CryoSat-1, whose Rokot carrier rocket was unable to achieve orbit. ESA built a replacement, with software upgrades and greater battery capacity, which carries an interferometric radar range-finder with twin antennas which measures the height difference between floating ice and open water. CryoSat-2 is operated as part of the CryoSat programme to study the Earth's polar ice caps, which is itself part of the Living Planet programme. The CryoSat-2 spacecraft was constructed by EADS Astrium, and was launched by ISC Kosmotras, using a Dnepr-1 carrier rocket, on 8 April 2010. On 22 October 2010, CryoSat-2 was declared operational following six months of on-orbit testing.

CryoSat-2 is operated from the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

CryoSat-1, also known as just CryoSat, was a European Space Agency satellite which was lost in a launch failure in 2005. It was to have been operated as part of the CryoSat programme to study the Earth's polar ice caps.

The CryoSat spacecraft was intended to operate in low Earth orbit for three years. It had a mass of 750 kilograms (1,700 lb) Its primary instrument, SIRAL, was to have used radar to determine and monitor the spacecraft's altitude in order to measure the elevation of the ice, and for radar imaging of the ice caps. A second instrument, DORIS, was to have been used to calculate precisely the spacecraft's orbit. It also carried an array of retroreflectors which would have allowed measurements to be made from the ground to verify the orbital data provided by DORIS.

CryoSat was launched from Site 133/3 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 15:02:00 UTC on 8 October 2005. The launch was conducted by Eurockot, using a Rokot carrier rocket with a Briz-KM upper stage. The command to shut down the rocket's second stage engine was missing from the flight control system, and consequently the stage burned to depletion. This prevented the second stage from separating from the Briz-KM, and as a result the rocket was unable to achieve orbit. It reentered over the Arctic Ocean, north of Greenland. A replacement satellite, CryoSat-2, was successfully launched in 2010.

Envisat  ("Environmental Satellite") is an Earth observation satellite. Its objective is to service the continuity of European Remote-Sensing Satellite missions, providing additional observational parameters to improve environmental studies.

In working towards the global and regional objectives of the mission, numerous scientific disciplines use the data acquired from the different sensors on the satellite, to study such things as atmospheric chemistry, ozone depletion, biological oceanography, ocean temperature and colour, wind waves, hydrology (humidity, floods), agriculture and arboriculture, natural hazards, digital elevation modelling (using interferometry), monitoring of maritime traffic, atmospheric dispersion modelling (pollution), cartographyand study of snow and ice.

It was launched on 1 March 2002 aboard an Ariane 5 from the Guyana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guyana into a Sun synchronous polar orbit at an altitude of 790 km (490 mi) (± 10 km (6.2 mi)). It orbits the Earth in about 101 minutes with a repeat cycle of 35 days.

Envisat is the largest earth observation satellite put into space (as of late 2006), being 26 m (85 ft) × 10 m (33 ft) × 5 m (16 ft) and having a mass of 8.5 t (8.4 long tons; 9.4 short tons).

The Envisat mission ended on 08 April 2012, following the unexpected loss of contact with the satellite.

Envisat data collectively provide a wealth of information on the workings of the Earth system, including insights into factors contributing to climate change.

COROT (French: COnvection ROtation et Transits planétaires; English: COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) is a space mission led by the French Space Agency (CNES) in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other international partners.

The mission's two objectives are to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly those of large terrestrial size, and to perform asteroseismology by measuringsolar-like oscillations in stars. It was launched at 14:28:00 UTC on 27 December 2006, atop a Soyuz 2.1b carrier rocket, reporting first light on 18 January 2007. Subsequently, the probe started to collect science data on 2 February 2007. COROT is the first spacecraft dedicated to the detection of transiting extrasolar planets, opening the way for more advanced probes such as Kepler and possibly TESS and PLATO. It detected its first extrasolar planet, COROT-1b, in May 2007, just 3 months after the start of the observations. Mission flight operations were originally scheduled to end 2.5 years from launch but operations were extended to 2013.

Cluster II is a space mission of the European Space Agency, with NASA participation, to study the Earth's magnetosphere over the course of an entire solar cycle.

The mission is composed of four identical spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation. A replacement for the original Cluster spacecraft which were lost in a launch failure in 1996, the four Cluster II spacecraft were successfully launched in pairs in July and August 2000 onboard two Soyuz-Fregat rockets from Baikonur. In February 2011, Cluster II celebrated 10 years of successful scientific operations in space.

The mission has been extended until December 2012.

China National Space Administration/ESA Double Star mission operated alongside Cluster II from 2003 to 2007.

The four identical Cluster II satellites study the impact of the Sun's activity on the Earth's space environment by flying in formation around Earth. For the first time in space history, this mission is able to collect three-dimensional information on how the solar wind interacts with the magnetosphere and affects near-Earth space and its atmosphere, including aurorae.

The satellites are named Rumba, Salsa, Samba and Tango but are more commonly called Cluster 1, Cluster 2, Cluster 3 and Cluster 4 or even C1, C2, C3 and C4.

The spacecraft are cylindrical (290 x 130 cm, see online 3D model) and are spin-stabilized at 15 rotations per minute. After launch, their solar cells provided 224 watts power for instruments and communications. The four spacecraft maneuver into various tetrahedral formations to study the magnetospheric structure and boundaries. The inter-spacecraft distances can be varied from around 17 to 10,000 kilometers (km). The propellant for the maneuvers makes up approximately half of the spacecraft's launch weight.

The highly elliptical orbits of the spacecraft reach a perigee of around 4 R_E (Earth radii, where 1 R_E = 6371 km) and an apogee of 19.6 R_E. Each orbit takes approximately 57 hours to complete. The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) acquires telemetry and distributes to the online data centers the science data from the spacecraft.

Cluster I was a constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft which were launched on the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 rocket, Flight 501, and subsequently lost when that rocket failed to achieve orbit.

The launch, which took place on June 4, 1996, ended in failure due to an error in the software design caused by inadequate protection from integer overflow. This resulted in the rocket veering off its flight path 37 seconds after launch, beginning to disintegrate under high aerodynamic forces, and finally self-destructing by its automated flight termination system.

Cluster consisted of four 1,200 kilograms (2,600 lb) cylindrical, spin-stabilised spacecraft, powered by 224 watt solar cells. The spacecraft were to have flown in a tetrahedral formation, and were intended to conduct research into the Earth's magnetosphere. The satellites would have been placed into highly eliptical orbits; 17,200 by 120,600 kilometres (10,700 by 74,900 mi), inclined at 90 degrees to the equator.

Following the failure of Cluster I, four replacement Cluster II satellites were built. 

The Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission was originally a constellation of five NASA satellites to study energy releases from Earth's magnetosphere known as substorms, magnetic phenomena that intensify auroras near Earth's poles. The name of the mission is an acronym alluding to the Titan, Themis.

Now three of the original satellites remain in the magnetosphere, while two have been moved into orbit near the Moon. Those two have been renamed ARTEMIS for Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun, but are also called ARTEMIS P1 (THEMIS B) and ARTEMIS P2 (THEMIS C).

The THEMIS satellites were launched February 17, 2007 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17 aboard a Delta II rocket. Each satellite carries identical instrumentation, including a fluxgate magnetometer (FGM), an electrostatic analyzer (ESA), a solid state telescope (SST), a search-coil magnetometer (SCM) and an electric field instrument (EFI). Each has a mass of 126 kg, including 49 kg of fuel.

Launch date 2007-02-17 23:01:00 UTC

Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program.

The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008. Mission scientists used instruments aboard the lander to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars, and to research the history of water there.

The multi-agency program was headed by the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, under the direction of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The program was a partnership of universities in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates (MDA) and other aerospace companies. It was the first mission to Mars led by a public university in NASA history. The mission underscored the value of university-led management. It was led directly from the University of Arizona's campus in Tucson, with project management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and project development at Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado. The operational funding for the mission extended through November 10, 2008.

Phoenix is NASA's sixth successful landing out of seven attempts and is the most recent spacecraft to land successfully on Mars as well as the first successful landing in a Martian polar region. The lander completed its mission in August 2008, and made a last brief communication with Earth on November 2 as available solar power dropped with the Martian winter. The mission was declared concluded on November 10, 2008, after engineers were unable to re-contact the craft. After unsuccessful attempts to contact the lander by the Mars Odyssey orbiter up to and past the Martian summer solstice on May 12, 2010, JPL declared the lander to be dead. Like the two Mars Exploration Rovers, the program was considered a success because it completed all planned science experiments and observations.

IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) experimental spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched on 21 May, 2010, aboard an H-IIA rocket, together with the Akatsuki (Venus Climate Orbiter) probe and four other small spacecraft. IKAROS is the first spacecraft to successfully demonstrate solar-sail technology in interplanetary space.

On December 8, 2010, IKAROS passed by Venus at about 80,800 km distance, completing the planned mission successfully, and entered its extended operation phase.

The IKAROS probe is the world's first spacecraft to use solar sailing as the main propulsion. It plans to demonstrate four key technologies (comments in parentheses refer to figure):

1. Deployment and control of a large, thin solar sail membrane (blue areas numbered 3)
2. Thin-film solar cells integrated into the sail to power the payload (black rectangles numbered 4)
3. Measurement of acceleration due to radiation pressure on the solar sail
4. Attitude control via variable reflectance liquid crystal panels (orange rectangles numbered 2)

The mission also includes investigations of aspects of interplanetary space, such as the gamma-ray burst, solar wind and cosmic dust.

The probe's ALADDIN instrument (ALDN-S and ALDN-E) measured the variation in dust density while its Gamma-Ray Burst Polarimeter (GAP) measured the polarization of gamma-ray bursts during its six month cruise.

If successful, IKAROS is to be followed by a 50 m (160 ft) sail, intended to journey to Jupiter and theTrojan asteroids, later in the decade.