Catalog info for raw Sentinel-1B radar data
What it measures. Catalog and descriptive information about raw Sentinel-1B radar collections, rather than the radar imagery itself. It tells you what raw data exists and its key attributes.
How it's made. Accompanies Sentinel-1B's Level 0 radar products, the compressed, unprocessed source data from the satellite's C-band radar before any focusing or processing.
How & where you'd use it. A lookup aid for finding and managing the raw radar files; the underlying Level 0 data must be decompressed and processed before it becomes usable imagery.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2016-04-25 → 2021-12-24
- Measured bySentinel-1B (C-SAR)
- Processing levelLevel Not provided
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- StatusCOMPLETE
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-1B, the second satellite in the Sentinel-1 constellation, was launched April 25, 2016. The Sentinel-1 satellites (Sentinel-1A, Sentinel-1B, and Sentinel-1C) are sun-synchronous polar-orbiting satellites that operate day and night performing C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging. The Sentinel-1 satellites operate in four imaging modes with different resolutions (down to 5 meters) and coverage (up to 400 kilometers). The Sentinel-1 satellites provide dual polarization capability and short revisit times. The spacecraft experienced an anomaly related to the instrument electronics power supply provided by the satellite platform, leaving it unable to deliver radar data on 23 December 2021, as a consequence, ESA and the European Commission announced the end of the Sentinel-1B mission on August 3, 2022. Sentinel-1B Level 0 products consist of compressed and unprocessed instrument source packets, with additional annotations and auxiliary information to support processing. Level 0 products are the basis from which all other high level products are produced. They are compressed using Flexible Dynamic Block Adaptive Quantization (FDBAQ) which provides a variable bit rate coding that increases the number of bits allocated to bright scatterers. For the data to be usable, it will need to be decompressed and processed using focusing software. Level 0 data includes noise, internal calibration and echo source packets as well as orbit and attitude information. The products in this collection are ISO compliant XML metadata created by the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center from the associated Sentinel-1B SAFE format product.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="SENTINEL-1B_META_RAW",
version="1",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from ASF Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Search and download data granules using the ASF Data Search graphical search interface Vertex. GET DATA
- Search and download data granules using NASA Earthdata Search interface. GET DATA
- Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission home page VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- ASF created Sentinel-1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION