Sentinel on AWS

Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data is available for anyone to use via Amazon S3.

Sentinel data is available for anyone via Amazon S3. Sentinel scenes are made available, often within hours of production.

Earth observation data provided by the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellites are revolutionizing the market of space applications. Free, full and open access to data with very short revisit times, high spatial resolution, and good spectral resolution can benefit several sectors - agriculture, environmental and land-change monitoring, natural disaster response, insurance and others.

The Sentinel-1 mission carries an advanced radar instrument to provide an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface. As a constellation of two satellites orbiting 180° apart, the mission images the entire Earth every six days. The mission benefits numerous services. For example, services that relate to the monitoring of Arctic sea-ice extent, routine sea-ice mapping, surveillance of the marine environment, including oil-spill monitoring and ship detection for maritime security, monitoring land-surface for motion risks, mapping for forest, water and soil management and mapping to support humanitarian aid and crisis situations.

The Sentinel-2 mission is a land monitoring constellation of two satellites (Sentinel-2A was launched on 23 June 2015 and Sentinel-2B will follow in the second half of 2016) that provide high resolution optical imagery and provide continuity for the current SPOT and Landsat missions. The mission will provide a global coverage of the Earth's land surface every 10 days with one satellite (and 5 days with 2 satellites), making the data of great use in on-going studies.

Sentinel-2 delivers high-resolution optical images for land monitoring, emergency response and security services. The satellite carries a multispectral imager with a swath of 290 km. The imager provides a versatile set of 13 spectral bands spanning from the visible and near infrared to the shortwave infrared, featuring four spectral bands at 10 m, six bands at 20 m and three bands at 60 m spatial resolution.

About the data

Sentinel data available on Amazon S3 allows anyone can use it to create new products on the AWS cloud without needing to worry about the cost of storing data or the time required to download it.

SOURCE European Commission (Copernicus), ESA
CATEGORY Satellite imagery
FORMAT
LICENSE Access to Sentinel data is free, full and open for the broad Regional, National, European and International user community. View Terms and conditions.
STORAGE SERVICE Amazon S3
LOCATION
  • s3://sentinel-s1-l1c in EU Central region for Sentinel-1 GRD data (one year rolling archive, starting 1st of May 2017)
  • s3://sentinel-s2-l1c in EU Central region for L1C data
  • s3://sentinel-s2-l2a in EU Central region for L2A data over Europe, dating from 28th of March onward
The data is in a Requester Pays bucket which means that you can access it freely within the EU Central region, but you will incur charges if you download it elsewhere.
UPDATE FREQUENCY New Sentinel data are added regularly, usually within few hours after they are available on Sentinel Scientific Hub.

Data structure for Sentinel-1

Each file is its own object in Amazon S3.. The basic data format is the following:

[product type]/[year]/[month]/[day]/[mode]/[polarization]/[product identifier]

For example, the files for individual scene are available in the following location: s3://sentinel-s1-l1c/GRD/2018/1/11/EW/DH/S1A_EW_GRDH_1SDH_20180111T110409_20180111T110513_020106_02247C_FBAB/

Where:

  • [product type] = GRD - GRD or SLC

  • [year] = e.g. 2018 - is the year the data was collected.

  • [month] = e.g. 1 - is the month of the year the data was collected (without leading zeros).

  • [day] = e.g. 11 - is the day of the month the data was collected (without leading zeros).

  • [mode] = e.g. EW - IW, EW, WV, IW1-IW3, EW1-EW5, WV1-WV2, S1-S6, IS1-IS7; note that modes depend on the [product type[

  • [polarization] = e.g. DH - DH, DV, SH, SV, VH, HV, HV, VH; note that polarizations depend on the observation scenario

  • product identifier - original product identifier

Data structure for Sentinel-2

Each file is its own object in Amazon S3. The data are organised per tiles using the Military grid system (latest KML file). The basic data format is the following:

tiles/[UTM code]/latitude band/square/[year]/[month]/[day]/[sequence]/DATA

For example, the files for individual scene are available in the following location: s3://sentinel-s2-l1c/tiles/10/S/DG/2015/12/7/0/

Where:

  • [UTM code] = e.g. 10 - grid zone designator.

  • latitude band = e.g. S - latitude band are lettered C- X (omitting the letters "I" and "O").

  • square = e.g DG - pair of letters designating one of the 100,000-meter side grid squares inside the grid zone.

  • [year] = e.g. 2015 - is the year the data was collected.

  • [month] = e.g. 12 - is the month of the year the data was collected (without leading zeros).

  • [day] = e.g. 7 - is the day of the month the data was collected (without leading zeros).

  • [sequence] = e.g. 0 - in most cases there will be only one image per day. In case there are more (in northern latitudes), the following images will be 1,2,…\.

  • DATA - data for each tile are organised as in original product S2 MSI Product Specification.

Metadata

The metadata of the product, which tile is part of, are available in parallel folder (productInfo.json contains the name of the product). This can be found in products/[year]/[month]/[day]/[product name].

Browse through data

You can browse through the contents of the Sentinel-2 Amazon Public Data set via the Sentinel Image browser.

Accessing the Data

Users can search for files using the index pages and access individual or related sets of files through the Sentinel Public bucket.

Featured uses

Contact us

In case you would be interested in adding some value added services to the data or you would like to show us what you can do with Sentinel data on AWS, please contact us.

Sentinel Open Public Dataset Forum

We’re ready to see new applications of Sentinel’s data.

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