Known data gaps?

Microwave Toolbox
#1

Is there a page somewhere describing known periods when S1 has no data?

Thanks,
Simon

#2

What do you mean? Or better do you understand that Sentinel-1 is an active radar mission with a per-orbit duty cycle of about 25min in about 110m? I.e. you only get about 30m every two hours? I.e. most of the time there will be gaps… it’s not like a continuous acquisition or passive sensor like an optical camera or similar.

Sentinel-1, like any other tasked satellite, executes an acquisition plan based on a background scenario adjusted to any special request. Although most of the time you can be sure data will be acquired over a certain area, there is no guarantee that it will in the final plan. One also needs to consider the production plan, i.e. what raw data gets processed to end-user products. You can read more about it at:
Sentinel-1- Observation Scenario - Planned Acquisitions - ESA - Sentinel (copernicus.eu)
and:
Production Scenario - Sentinel-1 - Sentinel Online - Sentinel (copernicus.eu)

hope this helps.

#3

For example, there are scenes for a specific point in Oct 2018, but not Sep 2018. Compare

https://scihub.copernicus.eu/apihub/search?start=0&rows=10&q=(%20beginPosition:[2018-09-01T00:00:00.000Z%20TO%202018-09-30T23:59:59.999Z])%20AND%20(%20(platformname:Sentinel-1%20AND%20producttype:GRD%20AND%20sensoroperationalmode:IW))%20AND%20footprint:%22Intersects(5.2,-72.6)%22

with

https://scihub.copernicus.eu/apihub/search?start=0&rows=10&q=(%20beginPosition:[2018-10-01T00:00:00.000Z%20TO%202018-10-31T23:59:59.999Z])%20AND%20(%20(platformname:Sentinel-1%20AND%20producttype:GRD%20AND%20sensoroperationalmode:IW))%20AND%20footprint:%22Intersects(5.2,-72.6)%22

#4

Someone seems to have spotted this already

Like I said above the information is publicly available in the Observation Scenario. You can check the Sentinel-1 Acquisition Segments and see if there were acquisitions over your area of interest.

Basically what I am trying to say is that for S1-SAR you need to look at this from a different perspective - the point is not if there are gaps, the point is if there were even data acquisitions over an area of interest during the time of interest.

You can also consider to contact the official Sentinel support. and ask this question. Note that this forum is for the SNAP software and related Toolboxes, so don’t expect to find many users who are able to reply to questions about the acquisition scenario.

#5

Thank you, Christiano!