Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/sentinel-1-raw
sentinel-1-raw·dataset

Raw unprocessed radar echoes (Sentinel-1 Level-0)

Sentinel-1 SAR — Level-0 Raw (RAW)
land ESA ESA Copernicus active SAFE
In plain English

What it measures. This is the lowest-level, unfocused raw radar data from the Sentinel-1 satellite — the compressed radar echoes and instrument packets exactly as they come off the sensor. It is not a usable picture or map; it's the unprocessed building block that has to be turned into an actual image first.

How it's made. It comes straight from Sentinel-1's C-band radar (SAR) sensor, compressed and stored before any SAR focusing or geolocation has been applied.

How & where you'd use it. Mainly engineers and researchers use it, for reprocessing, calibration, and developing new algorithms. If you just want to look at or analyze the data, you'll want the higher-level products instead (such as SLC, GRD, or RTC).

What's measured

Sentinel-1SARLevel-0RAWL0radar

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2014-10-03 → ongoing
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsSAFE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

Sentinel-1 Level-0 is the lowest-level SAR product: compressed, unfocused raw instrument source packets — the raw C-band radar echoes straight from the sensor, before any SAR focusing or geolocation. It is the archival source from which every higher-level Sentinel-1 product (SLC, GRD, OCN) is processed, and is used mainly for reprocessing, calibration and algorithm research rather than direct analysis.

Get the data

copernicus_access.py
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client

cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
    collections=["sentinel-1-raw"],   # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
    bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60),             # your area (W,S,E,N)
    datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items())            # then read assets with rioxarray / xarray
Browsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.