SAR Availability Tool

Objective

The SAR Availability Tool allows users to ascertain multi-sensor SAR acquisitions availability for areas of interests. It allows users to determine for a given area the available SAR acquisitions that have already been acquired/archived, planned, and predicted future-potential.

https://sar-avail.jpl.nasa.gov/

End-User documentation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-fM5HlbPDCUfgD0Pl0ws9lWq35sp6Zeg6h0rE0wt1Nc/edit

Platforms

Data from the following platforms are available:

• Sentinel-1A

• Sentinel-1B

• ALOS-2

• TanDEM-X-1

• TerraSAR-X-1

• Radarsat-1

We collect acquisition metadata across these platforms by scraping BOS SARcat.

Acquisition Statuses

• Archived

  • Implies it is archived into storage

  • We do not get archived from BOS, as it only tells us acquisitions, not SLC data files

• Acquired

  • Only states that the SLC has been acquired. We don’t know where it is archived if it is archived yet

• Predicted

  • Based on repeat orbit of prior acquisitions

  • Predicted acquisitions is generated on our end based on an acquired acquisitions and BOS returning next cycle repeat dates.

• Planned

  • Some agencies published their planned acquisitions

  • ESA publishes planned 2-weeks ahead time

Acquisition Naming Convention

acquisition-[spacecraft name]_[start timestamp]_[track number]_[beam mode]-bos_sarcat

The start timestamp is in the format YYYYMMDDThhmmss.sssZ

Track Number is a numerical value

Beam mode is the mode the instrument took the observation in

We append -bos_sarcat to annotate the acquisition with the source of acquisition. This helps in distinguishing acquisitions collected from ESA SciHub.

In case of predicted and planned acquisitions, the status is appended to the acquisitions name, for example:

acquisition-ALOS-2_20190714T033808.571Z_27_SM1-bos_sarcat-planned

acquisition-ALOS-2_20190713T235342.095Z_206_SM3-bos_sarcat-predicted

Export formats

After filtering to the acquisitions you are interested in, there are options to export the data in the following formats:

• ICS calendar

  • Can be import into Google Calendar and iCalendar

• KML google earth

  • Color-coded by platform or sensor

• CSV tabular

  • further sorting and filtering can be done using Excel functions