In cooperation with CONAE (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales), ESA is launching an Announcement of Opportunity for the international scientific community to access data from the SAOCOM mission for science and EO-based applications development.

This call is part of the ESA/CONAE Promotion of Utilization and Mission Applications and Science (PUMAS) initiative under Earthnet's Third Party Missions Programme and offers an opportunity for scientists and researchers to enable joint exploitation with ESA EO and Copernicus data.

The call is open to:

• Users located in the territory of ESA Member States (including Canada as an ESA cooperating state, and associated members)
• Joint teams from users located in the territory of ESA Member States (including Canada as an ESA cooperating state and associated members) and Argentinian users working together on dedicated PUMAS research projects.

How To Access Data

1. Go to the ESA User Services Portal
2. Register or log in to EO Sign In
3. After logging in, complete and submit the form with your proposed use of the data
4. The proposal will be evaluated by ESA, which normally takes between 6 and 8 weeks
5. Upon successful evaluation, you will receive a confirmation email, which describes the amount of data to be provided, and details of how to order the data.

Data are available to order on demand upon submission of a Project Proposal subject to evaluation and acceptance by ESA and CONAE.

ESA and CONAE will support as many high-quality and innovative projects as possible within the quota limit available, therefore only a limited amount of products will be allowed for each project.

For archive data, the SAOCOM CONAE catalogue can verify the availability of products over the Region of Interest (ROI) in the Time of Interest (TOI). The catalogue also contains product specifications and tutorials.

Availability and restrictions to the use of the data are described in the Terms of Applicability document. Utilisation of this data is subject to ESA's Earth Observation TPM Terms and Conditions.

The call will close on 31 December 2024.

Products

The collection provides access to SAOCOM products acquired around the globe. However, in compliance with CONAE's existing agreements with ASI (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana), ASI maintains exclusive distribution rights for SAOCOM-1 data collected over Europe and the Mediterranean – referred to as the ASI Zone of Exclusivity (between longitude range 10W-50E and latitude range 30-80N. The exception is the southern limit of the zone of exclusivity, from Gibraltar to the Suez Canal, which is within the territorial waters of North African countries). Therefore, data collected inside the ASI Zone of Exclusivity will not be included in this call but are accessible through the SAOCOM Europe data products collection page, in the framework of the current agreement with ASI.

Both archive imagery and new acquistions from SAOCOM-1 are available, in four different geometric projections:

• Single Look Complex (SLC) - Level 1A
• Detected Image (DI) - Level 1B
• Ground Ellipsoid Corrected (GEC) - Level 1C
• Ground Terrain Corrected (GTC) - Level 1D

Details of available products are provided in the following table:

All the Principal Investigators (PIs) who contribute to this opportunity are required to submit a report summarising the results of their project. The report will be shared with CONAE, and PIs may be invited to present the results at symposia or workshops to be organised by ESA and CONAE. Download the template for the SAOCOM PI report.