Europe and France have played a role in Earth observation from an early stage. In the late sixties, the first French satellites carried geodesy payloads to measure the dimensions of the planet and in 1971, the EOLE satellite began to study wind circulation in the southern hemisphere.

In the eighties and nineties, a considerable step was taken with the creation of SPOT , CNES's observation satellite system and ESA's radar satellites from the ERS programme. Numerous observation instruments have also been carried aboard cooperative missions with the United States, Russia, and Japan.

In 1988, the ESA decided to undertake a project to establish a "space platform" for environmental observation. The goal was to contribute to the collection of long series of measurements and to cross-reference them in order to better understand natural phenomena.

Experts from Estec, ESA's scientific and technical centre, then designed a very ambitious Earth observation project. In the early nineties, the Envisat programme, for ENVIronmental SATellite, began.