February 04, 2021

  • Surface Reflectance (SR) assets will now be published for all SkySat images (including archive), except where MODIS imagery did not overlap the SkySat AOI on the same day as capture. The SR assets will be available for both SkySatScene and SkySatCollect item-types, as the new asset-type ‘analytic_sr’. However note SR assets will not be available in Explorer or the Command Line Interface until the end of February.

  • A new SkySat asset, the ‘basic_l1a_all_frames’ (aka All-Frames) is now available under the SkySatCollect item-type. This asset is published for all SkySat imagery dating back to October 2017. The All-frames asset includes all of the originally captured frames in a Collect, up to 50 frames per second, uncalibrated and in a raw digital number format. Delivered as a zip file containing all frames as basic L1A panchromatic DN imagery files, with accompanying RPC txt files, and a JSON pinhole camera model.

September 29, 2020

Planet Explorer now displays both the 'gsd' and 'pixel_resolution' parameters for both SkySatScenes and SkySatCollects. The 'gsd' parameter represents the ground sample distance of the basic SkySat product, whereas the 'pixel_resolution' parameter represents the resampled resolution of the orthorectified assets.

September 1, 2020

The SkySat cloud_cover field is now computed as the sum of cloud_percent and heavy_haze_percent so all cloud values are consistent. Note that cloud_cover is still in the range 0-1 (a ratio), while cloud_percent and heavy_haze_percent are percentages in the range 0 to 100. The properties of the archive have not been changed at this time, but may be changed in the future to also reflect this change.

June 17, 2020

Next-Generation Planetscope imagery will now be published as both standard and test quality. 3 and 4 band data will be available through the existing PSScene3Band, PSScene4Band, and PSOrthotile items. Additionally, 5-band (blue, green, red, rededge, nir) imagery is available under the analytic_5b asset, which is in the PSOrthotile item type. The way to identify data in this release is by the "psb.sd" value in the "instrument" field.

See https://developers.planet.com/docs/data/items-assets/ for details on Items/Assets.

An Image Quality Report on data contained in this release is available at https://assets.planet.com/docs/Planet_Combined_Imagery_Product_Specs_letter_screen.pdf.

May 19, 2020

Planet is improving its algorithm for calculating Surface Reflectance in PlanetScope and RapidEye products. Planet is also now producing analytic_sr assets under the existing PSOrthoTile and REOrthoTile item types.

The new Surface Reflectance algorithm should help reduce scene-to-scene difference due to rapidly varying atmospheric conditions. Reference the updated white paper on the support page: https://support.planet.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012629573-Planet-Surface-Reflectance-Product

The new analytic_sr assets are available under the existing PSOrthoTile and REOrthoTile items listed in the Dev Center: https://developers.planet.com/docs/data/items-assets/