Guides

How Data Access Works

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The "Data"

While we prepare for the launch of our fleet of amazing satellites, we already have and will continue to seed our library and catalog with data that simulates our eventual imagery products.

Currently, we have a simulated image of the Penn's Landing area of Philadelphia, PA that contains red, green, blue, near-infrared (MSI) and panchromatic bands this data lacks simulated thermal band data. The various sample API requests that follow in the Data Access section reference this imagery.

Note: For any orders outside of the Penn's Landing area, actual imagery will not be returned. Currently, we use OpenStreetMaps to simulate the collection and processing of imagery to exercise our Ground system in lieu of simulated imagery.

Once we have actual satellites on orbit, every image that is downlinked from one of our satellites is processed into end-user products, stored in our archive, and updated in our data catalog. For now, we simulate the downlinking process and use our simulated imagery to feed the creation of products.

Accessing Items and Assets

The Data Access API provides a SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC)-adherent interface for both searching and accessing those end-user data products. In keeping with the STAC model, we call these data products assets. Every image we collect is assigned a unique id (the image_id), and for each image we produce several assets. The image_id can be used to access these assets.

Albedo asset types are designed to fit a specific set of end-user needs. We cater to three broad categories of users when designing our asset types.

  • View Ready assets cater to users who intend to view imagery in a desktop, mobile, or web application. Assets types in this category will have the prefix view_ready.
  • Coming 2024 Analysis Ready assets cater users who intend to analyze imagery. Asset types in this category will start have the prefix analysis_ready.
  • Coming 2024 Photogrammetry Ready assets cater to users intending to do their own photogrammetric processing. Asset types in this category will have the prefix photogrammetry_ready.

The Albedo image processing workflow currently creates all of the above three assets (products) and makes them available in a variety of ways:

  • Tiles
    • XYZ
    • WMTS
  • Direct Download
  • COG Streaming

Updated over 1 year ago

What’s Next

Now that you're caught up on the high-level functionality, time to dive into the specifics - click below to learn how to submit your first tasking order!