Envisat Begins Study of Earth's Environment

The European Space Agency's recently-launched Envisat began its ten year mission last week to gauge the health of planet Earth. The $2.2 billion, 9 ton satellite successfully turned on all ten of its scientific instruments and took some high-quality images of the break-up of the Larson B ice shelf in Antarctica. Another instrument captured images of photosynthetic plankton near the coast of Mauritania in northwest Africa.