Satellite Acquisition Plan

To check whether a satellite passing over an area is going to take an image, Spectator uses acquisition plans provided by the satellite’s operator. Acquisition plans as the name suggest, store information about the acquisitions the satellite is going to perform in the near future. As it is often useful to look at the raw data, we have created a viewer for acquisition plans of Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Landsat-8 and Landsat-8 in a single interface. You can find it under this link or by clicking the image below.

Each acquisition plan is a bit different. Below we have gathered a couple of most important details for every satellite separately, including data source file format and time coverage period. Using the file source link you can also access archive acquisition plans if needed. Keep in mind that Spectator only uses the latest acquisition plan available.

Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B

Acquisition plan file source: sentinel.esa.int

File format: KML

Time coverage: 10-15 days

Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B

Acquisition plan file source: sentinel.esa.int

File format: KML

Time coverage: 12 days

Landsat-8

Acquisition plan file source: landsat.usgs.gov

File format: TXT

Time coverage: 1-3 days

Landsat-9

Acquisition plan file source: landsat.usgs.gov

File format: TXT

Time coverage: 1-3 days

Getting the data in GeoJSON format

You can extract the above data into a GeoJSON format using our API. It also allows you to combine multiple satellite plans into a single file.