CEOS EO HANDBOOK – MISSION SUMMARY - Sentinel-1 C -
Full Name Sentinel-1 C
aka S1C
Status Approved
Mission Agencies ESA, COM Launch Date Dec 2024
Mission Links mission site EOL Date Apr 2034
EO Portal Info NORAD Catalog #
International Designator
Orbit Type Sun-synchronous Orbit Period 98.74 minutes
Orbit Sense Ascending Orbit Inclination 98.19 deg
Orbit Altitude 693 km Orbit Longitude
Orbit LST 18:00 Repeat Cycle 12 days
Objectives and Applications Sentinel-1 provides continuity of C-band SAR data for operational applications notably in the following areas: monitoring of sea ice zones and the arctic environment, surveillance of marine environment, monitoring of land surface motion risks and mapping in support of humanitarian aid in crisis situations.
Mission Measurements
CategoryParameterInstrument(s)
LandLandscape topography C-Band SAR
Soil moisture C-Band SAR
Vegetation C-Band SAR
Multi-purpose imagery (land) C-Band SAR
OceanOcean topography/currents C-Band SAR
Ocean surface winds C-Band SAR
Ocean wave height and spectrum C-Band SAR
Multi-purpose imagery (ocean) C-Band SAR
Snow & IceSnow cover, edge and depth C-Band SAR
Sea ice cover, edge and thickness C-Band SAR
Mission Instruments
AIS - Automatic Identification System
C-Band SAR - C-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar
Featured Datasets
More Datasets
L0 RAW
Jan-2024
The SAR Level-0 products consist of compressed and unfocused SAR raw data. Level-0 products are the basis from which all other high level products are produced. Level-0 data is 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. Read more

L1 SLC
Jan-2024
Level-1 Single Look Complex (SLC) products consist of focused SAR data, geo-referenced using orbit and attitude data from the satellite, and provided in slant-range geometry. Slant range is the natural radar range observation coordinate, defined as the line-of-sight from the radar to each reflecting object. The products are in zero-Doppler orientation where each row of pixels represents points along a line perpendicular to the sub-satellite track. The products include a single look in each dimension using the full available signal bandwidth and complex samples (real and imaginary) preserving the phase information. The products have been geo-referenced using the orbit and attitude data from the satellite and have been corrected for azimuth bi-static delay, elevation antenna pattern and range spreading loss. SM SLCs contain one image per polarisation for its single swath. IW, having three sub-swaths, has three images in single polarisation and six images for dual polarisation. EW, having five sub-swaths, has five images for single polarisation and ten images for dual polarisation products. Read more

L1 GRD
Jan-2024
Level-1 Ground Range Detected (GRD) products consist of focused SAR data that has been detected, multi-looked and projected to ground range using the Earth ellipsoid model WGS84. The ellipsoid projection of the GRD products is corrected using the terrain height specified in the product general annotation. The terrain height used varies in azimuth but is constant in range (For IW/EW modes only the terrain height of first subswath is considered). Ground range coordinates are the slant range coordinates projected onto the ellipsoid of the Earth. Pixel values represent detected amplitude. Phase information is lost. The resulting product has approximately square resolution pixels and square pixel spacing with reduced speckle at a cost of reduced spatial resolution. Read more

L2 OCN
Jan-2024
Level-2 consists of geolocated geophysical products derived from Level-1. Level-2 Ocean products for wind, wave and currents applications may contain the following geophysical components derived from the SAR data: Ocean Wind field, Ocean Swell spectra, Surface Radial Velocity. Read more

Biomass CCI AGB 2017
Dec-2019



This dataset comprises estimates of forest above-ground biomass for the year 2017. The data has been produced as part of the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) programme by the Biomass CCI team. The data was derived from input data from the PALSAR-2 instrument on the ALOS-2 satellite, and data from the Sentinel-1 satellite. The ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 dataset was obtained from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in the form of a mosaic of images acquired in 2017. The Sentinel-1 dataset consisted of individual data takes by the 1A and 1B units during 2017 and provided by the European Space Agency. Read more
Groups: LSI-VC F&B SG

OpenSearch Datasets No IDN OpenSearch datasets found.

Selected FedEO OpenSearch Results (view all 1 results: browser , table )
CLIMATE APPLICATIONS: Ice contributions to sea level rise

Want to explore more? Read about FedEO by ESA or click here to search FedEO or CMR OpenSearch by NASA