In light of recent developments that threaten to lead to the break-up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, ESA is making daily satellite images of the ice shelf available to the public via the 'Webcam' from Space web page in order to monitor the developments as they occur.

New rifts have developed on the Wilkins Ice Shelf that could lead to the opening of the ice bridge that has been preventing the ice shelf from disintegrating and breaking away from the Antarctic Peninsula, as seen in the Envisat image acquired on 26 November 2008.

ESA's Envisat has delivered SAR (synthetic aperture radar) images to the ESTRACK ground station at Santa Maria, Azores, Portugal. These are the first such images received and processed at the new station.