Probably the most sophisticated sensor onboard ENVISAT is the so-called ASAR – Ad-vanced Synthetic Aperture Radar. It’s a radar system which constantly emits radar waves which are reflected from ground and received by ASAR. From these reflected waves surface maps with 30 meters resolution can be generated. The key point is that these maps can be generated day and night, 24x7, and even at 100% cloud coverage, because radar waves are actively illuminating the surface and can penetrate clouds. This makes ASAR superior to optical sensors. These advantages are the reason why Germany currently launched a radar satellite, SAR-Lupe, with a peak resolution of below 1 m for military surveillance purposes.How do we get the data from ENVISAT? ENVISAT transmits the data in two ways to ground. One is directly to a ground station in Kiruna in Sweden. Though this is the easiest link it works only when ENVISAT flies over Kiruna. In order to have constant data access ENVISAT also transmits via the European relay satellite ARTEMIS, which is located in a geostationary orbit, to the ground station ESRIN in Italy. From there the data are distributed to five different data processing facilities in Europe, so called PACs (Processing & Archiving Centers), where the data are exploited and made available to the researchers. This is just the first step: Compiling the status of our atmosphere. We also need to know how much trace gases and aerosols our atmosphere can stand without too much warming. And finally, what can we do to lower these unwanted constituents? We need at least to withdraw the same amount of substances we release into atmosphere until we arrive at a closed loop cycle maintaining garbage concentrations well below their critical limits. Plants helps us to withdraw CO2. It’s up to us to reduce burning CO2 to the same emission rate. We are far from that. But we have an alternative: Switching from CO2 emission to H2O emission. There are no H2O emission limits. Earth bathes in water. So let’s be pioneers: Don’t burn carbon, let’s burn hydrogen!