Madrid, 7 November 2011.- Over the last few days, the Deimos-1 observation satellite, launched in space by Elecnor in July 2009, has followed the development of the volcanic sea stain caused by the submarine eruption at El Hierro Island.

As can be seen in the general image taken by Deimos-1 on Saturday 5 November, the large stain is decreasing in size as it moves into the open sea and currently covers a surface area of 83.5 million m2 (8,340.5 hectares). The volcanic bubble, highlighted by a box in the detail of the image, is 640 metres in diameter and spans an area of 34 hectares (0.34 million m2).

The Deimos-1 satellite is the first European Earth observation satellite to be privately funded in its entirety. It was developed by Elecnor Deimos, the Elecnor technology division, to obtain high-resolution images of the Earth for subsequent processing and use in various applications, such as agriculture, the environment, defence, climate change, deforestation, the fight against natural disasters and water resources control.

The satellite's main instrument is a set of 6 cameras facing the Earth, which can acquire images on 3 different spectrum bands with a detail of 22 metres. The Deimos-1 satellite provides added value to this space segment nearing the 20-metre mark, such as the wide sweep of its images close on 640 km, among other factors.