Monster satellite begins Earth checkup

Ice boulders float from a melting Antarctic shelf in an ENVISAT satellite image.

(CNN) -- The largest, most expensive satellite from the European Space Agency has beamed back its first images, signaling the start of a thorough examination of the health of the planet.

The $2.2 billion, nine-ton spacecraft, launched one month ago aboard a powerful Ariane 5 rocket, is equipped with 10 different devices to monitor the atmosphere, land, sea and ice.

Known as ENVISAT, the orbiter will provide the most detailed picture yet of environmental conditions on Earth, according to space agency scientists, who unveiled the inaugural images last week in Italy.

The probe went into service just in time to capture the disintegration of an ice shelf in Antarctica. The rapid rate at which the Larsen B shelf broke apart surprised scientists, who speculate that it was hastened by global warming.

An exploding population of phytoplankton swirls off the African coast in an image taken from the $2.2 billion orbiter.

The March meltdown on the Antarctic Peninsula was captured by an ENVISAT radar.

Another camera onboard, known as the Medium-Resolution Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument, monitors chlorophyll concentrations in oceans and coastal areas.

It zoomed in on a phytoplankton bloom, or burgeoning population of photosynthetic plankton, near the coast of Mauritania in northwest Africa.