Mokpo Port Seen From Orbit

South Korea’s island-studded Mokpo port captured by ESA’s Earth-observing Proba-V minisatellite.

Located in the southwest of the country, the mid-sized city of Mokpo is a historic naval base and gateway to the country’s Honam Plain. Mokpo is visible in this false-colour image as a blue-grey area on the estuary of the Yeonsang River.

The port city is surrounded by more than 1400 islands, which provide fishing grounds while safeguarding Mokpo from the effects of large typhoons and tsunami. An extensive region of high sediment concentrations is also visible, extending into the Yellow Sea in a bow shape.

Launched on 7 May 2013, Proba-V is a miniaturised ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.

Its main camera’s continent-spanning 2250 km swath width collects light in the blue, red, near-infrared and mid-infrared wavebands at 300 m resolution and down to 100 m resolution in its central field of view.

VITO Remote Sensing in Belgium processes and then distributes Proba-V data to users worldwide. An online image gallery highlights some of the mission’s most striking images so far, including views of storms, fires and deforestation.

This 100 m-resolution image was acquired by Proba-V on 6 October 2016.

Credit: ESA/Belspo – produced by VITO Larger image