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The dammed Zêzere river is seen in the centre of the main image, with burnt scars and fires burning to its north. The village of Nodeirinho – home of many of the casualties – is situated amid the scars.

The forest fire is believed to have been started by a lightning strike during an intense heatwave. Aircraft have been used to drop water over the Pedrógão Grande region.

Showing details down to 100 m in size, the main image was acquired on Tuesday by Proba-V. Among ESA’s smallest Earth-observing missions, at a cubic metre, Proba-V covers the world’s entire land surface every two days.

Proba-V has a 2250 km-wide field of view with an overall 300 m resolution, narrowing to 100 m at the centre.  A second 330 m-resolution image acquired on Saturday provides a wider context to the blaze.

The satellite contributes to Europe’s world-monitoring Copernicus programme, which makes imagery and data freely available to authorities. The V stands for Vegetation – a lighter but fully functional redesign of the camera previously flown on France’s full-sized Spot-4 and Spot-5 satellites.

Launched on 7 May 2013, Proba-V continues the supply of this much-needed information for applications such as assessing climate impact, managing water resources and monitoring crops.

Proba-V’s wide view and polar orbit means it revisits every spot on Earth’s land every two days, building up a new global composite for researchers every 10 days.

More than 1100 registered users in 108 countries are already making use of the satellite.

The Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission has also observed the fire, showing the extent of the burnt area.