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ERS-1 carried an array of earth-observation instruments that gathered information about the Earth (land, water, ice and atmosphere) using a variety of measurement principles. These included :

• A nadir pointing Radar Altimeter operating in the Ku band
• A Four channel Infrared Radiometer for measuring temperatures at the sea-surface and the top of clouds.
• A Microwave Sounder
• A Synthetic aperture radarSynthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar in which sophisticated post-processing of radar data is used to produce a very narrow effective beam. It can only be used by moving instruments over relatively immobile targets, but it has seen wide applic
• A WindFor the 1928 film, see The Wind. Wind in the most general sense, is the movement of air. It occurs at all scales, from local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting tens of minutes to global winds resulting from solar heating of the plan Scatterometer

For determining the orbit accurately it included onboard the PRARE (Precision Range and Range-Rate Equipment) and a LaserFor alternative meanings see laser (disambiguation). A laser light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation is a device which uses a quantum mechanical effect, stimulated emission, to generate a coherent beam of light. Light from a laser is often RetroreflectorA retroreflector is a device that sends light or other radiation back where it came from regardless of the angle of incidence, unlike a mirror, which does that only if the mirror is exactly perpendicular to the light beam. This effect can be commonly obta. The PRARE was non-operational since launch. The RetroreflectorA retroreflector is a device that sends light or other radiation back where it came from regardless of the angle of incidence, unlike a mirror, which does that only if the mirror is exactly perpendicular to the light beam. This effect can be commonly obta was used for calibrating the Radar Altimeter to within 10 cmcm redirects here, alternate uses: cm (disambiguation A centimetre (symbol cm American spelling: centimeter is an SI unit of length. One centimetre is: one-hundredth of one metre one-tenth of a decimetre ten millimetres. millimetre << centimetre << decime.

ERS-1 failed in March 10March 10 is the 69th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (70th in Leap years). There are 296 days remaining. Events 241 BC First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands The Romans sinks the Carthaginian fleet; end of First Punic War. 1496 Christoph 2000, far exceeding its original lifespan.

The successor ERS-2 was launched on April 21, 1995 it is largely identical to ERS-1 with the addition of the GOME (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) and absorption spectrometer. It has been operating without gyroscopes since February 2001 with some degrading of the data provided by the instruments. The tape drive aboard failed on 22 June 2003 leaving some of the instruments operating only within visibility of a ground station.

The successor to ERS-2 is Envisat