Umbra, one of the leaders in advanced space radar technology, announced that it has made over $1 million of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data available to the public via its Open Data Program, which launched on March 15, 2023. In the span of only four months, Umbra has already released more open data than all other SAR providers combined. The company also announced that it is expanding its Open Data Program from 10 regularly monitored sites to 24.

Umbra satellites generate the highest-resolution commercial SAR data ever offered commercially. Within the Open Data Program, users can work with spotlight mode data products ranging from Umbra's industry-leading unrivaled 25cm to 1m resolution. Starting in August 2023, all of Umbra's open data collects will include a comprehensive set of complex data and file types, including GEC, SICD, SIDD, and CPHD. The Open Data Program is updated several times a week and offers the opportunity for users to analyze the time-series data to detect changes at each location.

"Historically, sub-50cm resolution data was restricted to the defense market," said Gabe Dominocielo, Umbra's co-founder and president. "I'm excited to enable free access to the highest-resolution commercial SAR data."

SAR satellites are particularly effective when it comes to change detection data, as they can capture images not only during the day, but also at night and during any weather conditions, including cloud cover, and smoke. These frequently updated images enable researchers, students, and others to harness Umbra's data for a variety of purposes, including training machine learning models to work with the data.

Click here to learn about Umbra's Dedicated Satellite Missions.