The European Space Agency has recreated a satellite technique first demonstrated three decades ago, temporarily positioning two Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellites in close formation to repeat the pioneering ERS-1–ERS-2 tandem mission. According to the agency, the setup achieved one-day repeat radar imaging of the same Antarctic region and again showed how the approach can measure glacier motion and pinpoint the grounding line with high precision.

The item, published on 16 September 2026, recounts that 30 years earlier ESA first demonstrated the power of flying two satellites in very close formation. The recreated pairing was temporary, and the agency presents the results as a fresh demonstration of the method's measurement capability rather than a new finding about ice loss.

The page also gathers earlier and archived material on polar ice, including a December 2024 account of the first joint ESA–NASA measurements of the Greenland Ice Sheet's changing shape, an October 2023 report that 40% of Antarctic ice shelves had significantly reduced in volume over the past quarter-century, and an April 2023 report that ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica had increased fivefold since the 1990s.