NASA’s Alaska Satellite Facility announced the availability of new data products from the Observational Products for End-Users from Remote Sensing Analysis (OPERA) project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). These high-level synthetic aperture radar (SAR) products are intended to address the needs of the Earth science community for free, low-latency space-based observations. The OPERA project is managed by JPL, with partners from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, USGS, the University of Maryland College Park, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Southern Methodist University.
For 30 years, ASF has distributed SAR data as a NASA Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC). SAR data typically require additional processing steps before they are useful for Earth science applications and workflows. Such processing is often difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. The OPERA products eliminate these hurdles by providing users with data that are already processed and ready for immediate applications.
The OPERA products distributed by ASF are derived from Sentinel-1 and NASA/Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) SAR (NISAR) data. As new Sentinel-1 and NISAR data become available, new products are created by OPERA and can be downloaded from ASF.
OPERA Level 2 products are now available.
- The Coregistered Single-Look Complex (CSLC-S1) products: These are Sentinel-1 SLC images precisely aligned to a pre-defined UTM map projection system. Since they contain both amplitude and phase information, they can be used directly in InSAR processing. Temporal coverage of CSLC-S1 extends from 2014 to the present. The data cover an area that includes the U.S. and U.S. territories, Canada within 200 km of the U.S. border, and all mainland countries from the southern U.S. border down to and including Panama. The CSLC is the basis for future Surface Displacement (DISP) products.
- The Radiometric Terrain Corrected (RTC-S1) SAR Backscatter product: These are derived from Sentinel-1 SLC data. Radiometric terrain correction and geocoding are based on the Copernicus GLO-30 Digital Elevation Model (DEM). RTC-S1 record extends from October 2023 to the present, with a near-global coverage that includes all land masses except Antarctica. The RTC-S1 is the basis for future Sentinel-1 Dynamic Surface Water eXtent (DSWx-S1) product.
The L2 OPERA products can be easily accessed using these ASF Data Discovery tools:
- Vertex: A powerful yet easy-to-use graphical interface for creating searches, refining results, and downloading remote-sensing data from the ASF archive.
- Python Search Module (asf_search): Allows users to find and download SAR data in just a few lines of Python. Available through PyPi and Conda, this module is targeted at Python users writing new tools.
- Search API: A publicly available REST API that provides access to the ASF data catalog. It supports wget, curl, and most programming languages.
OPERA products are also available to download using Earthdata Search.