Image of Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja, a mountaintop in East Antarctica, appearing amid a stream of ice. Image acquired by NISAR mission. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This week has seen the release of the first publicly available batches of Earth Observation (EO) data from the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, and a commercial rocket from China launching 9 satellites including several EO payloads.
NISAR Data Publicly Available
Teams in the United States and India have begun publicly releasing datasets from both NISAR’s L-band and S-band radars.
The United States team has begun releasing calibrated products continuously for all L-band measurements collected since 17 June 2026, following early sample and limited releases. These data are available for registered users from the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center, which hosts and distributes all NASA synthetic aperture radar data.
In parallel, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has publicly released the first batch of datasets from the S-band SAR. The dataset being released is from Cycle 25, which began on 08 July 2026, and is being made available to registered users via ISRO’s EO data hub, Bhoonidhi. Users need to register on the Bhoonidhi data hub, but once they have done so, they can search, visualise and download NISAR datasets, and the platform also offers some analysis tools.
The intention is that files processed from both the L-band and S-band SAR will be released on an ongoing basis, and earlier datasets will be reprocessed and added to the archive in phases.
One point to note is that ISRO highlighted that some S-band scenes may show faint striping over featureless areas such as deserts and oceans, and some scenes have occasional interference from radio signals. The organisation noted that both issues would be addressed in future releases as the calibration improves.
Chinese Launches
Last Wednesday, the commercial Chinese company, ORIENSPACE, successfully launched 9 satellites into a 500-kilometre sun-synchronous orbit from its Gravity-1 rocket from a ship in the East China Sea.
- Six EO satellites from the Dongpo constellation, which were a mix of two optical and four synthetic aperture radar satellites. These will combine with the existing Dongpo constellation. Other reports indicated that two of these launched satellites, Dongpo-13 and Dongpo-14, provided two high-definition images just 1.5 hours after reaching orbit. The data is expected to be used for applications such as agriculture, forestry, disaster monitoring and emergency response; although interestingly, Dongpo-14 is reported as having the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics from Chengdu as a partner, with its sub-metre spatial resolution imagery to be used for to insurance and investment applications.
- Xiguang-2 01 is a hyperspectral and optical imaging satellite with onboard artificial intelligence capabilities to process imagery. It is reported as having 10-metre spatial resolution, and the data will mostly be used by the Yunnan Provincial Bureau of Geological and Mineral Exploration and Development
- Tianyi-49 is understood to be an optical EO satellite, although the spatial resolution has not been publicised, and the data will be used for applications such as mineral exploration, environmental monitoring, and urban planning.
- Lilac-3, is a demonstration satellite testing a new platform design and attitude control systems.
Summary
New EO launches occur, which are great, but it is more interesting to see the first datasets being released and wondering what they might show. There has already been an interesting ‘hummingbird’ NISAR image released, shown at the top, of the Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja, a mountaintop in East Antarctica, poking out amid a stream of ice flowing northeast to the ocean where the fractures and crevices cause the scene to resemble a hummingbird.
