A result of the transition made by the European Space Agency (ESA) to its new Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem is that Sentinel-1 data files are no longer compressed. Therefore, all Sentinel-1 data files available from NASA’s Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) since September 26, 2023, are larger by as much as 60%. The effect of this is that some files will take longer to download than you have come to expect. And, depending on the quality of your internet connection, this may result in incomplete file transfers if the download connection times out before the transfer is complete. If you suspect that this may have occurred, please try the download again.
ESA is aware of this issue and hopes to have a solution by the end of this year. In the meantime, ASF is exploring options we can implement until this permanent solution is in place.
We will update this announcement as additional information becomes available. For questions, contact ASF User Support at uso@asf.alaska.edu
Update 2 May 2024
Please note that SNAP version 10 has fixed the problem of missing IW subswaths when compressed Sentinel-1 files were imported using earlier software versions.
Update 26 March 2024
Comment in the STEP forum regarding importing Sentinel-1 files into SNAP.
Update 2 February 2024
Note: This Copernicus Help Center blog was updated two weeks ago.
Update 23 October 2023
Some users are reporting that Sentinel-1 data available through the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (and therefore from ASF) are no longer compatible with the Sentinel-1 Toolbox (SNAP).
- Discussions of the issue can be found in the STEP Forum:
- More discussion in the Copernicus Community Forum
Update 24 October 2023
From ESA in the Copernicus Community Forum:
“In the last month we have detected some incidents that did not occur before:
1) The size of the images in .zip format has doubled.
2) SNAP does not show swath 3 data when trying to open from the zip file. However, if the zip file is previously unzipped, the swath 3 data does exist and can be manually loaded into SNAP.”