PlanetScope

PlanetScope is one of the satellite constellation operated by Planet. It is now possible to purchase, order and access PlanetScope data using Sentinel Hub (SH).

About PlanetScope data

Highlights

• Almost daily coverage worldwide
• 3.7-4.1 m pixel size (resampled to 3 m)
• Blue, Green, Red, Near Infrared,
• additional bands Coastal Blue, Green I, Yellow, and Red Edge for the newest generation of satellites.

Mission information

PlanetScope satellite constellation consists of more than 180 satellites called Doves. Each Dove satellite is a CubeSat made of three cubic units and thus measures only 10 cm x 10 cm x 30 cm. The satellites are launched in groups, which constantly improves mission's characteristics such as revisit times, spatial and spectral resolutions. The constellation is constantly "on" and does not require an acquisition planning.

PlanetScope data is an excellent source for vegetation monitoring. It complements Sentinel-2 data with better spatial resolution and better temporal coverage, which is especially important in cloudy areas as it increases the chance of acquiring a cloudless image.

Basic facts

More information:

• https://www.planet.com/products/planet-imagery/
• https://assets.planet.com/docs/Planet_Combined_Imagery_Product_Specs_letter_screen.pdf

Attribution and use

The PlanetScope products are released under the license available here.

Purchasing PlanetScope data

Note: If you already have your Planet's api key that has access to PlanetScope data, you can skip this section and continue with Ordering PlanetScope Data.

The process of purchasing of PlanetScope data in Sentinel Hub goes as follows:

• Check the pricing and conditions. If you would like to buy bigger area send us an e-mail and we will prepare a custom offer.
• Go to the "Billing" section in your SH Dashboard and buy the Planet Scope plan.
• You will get an invitation from Planet to sign EULA, after which you will receive your Planet's api key.

Once you have your Planet's api key you can proceed to Ordering PlanetScope Data.

Additional info

• Vouchers for non-commercial use available, sponsored by ESA, follow this link.
• Volume discounts possible for large users. Contact us.
• Existing Planet users can use the data through Sentinel Hub using their own credentials.

Ordering PlanetScope Data

For ordering of PlanetScope data you will need your Planet api key. To order PlanetScope data, please use our Third Party Data Import API.

Data can be ordered individually or by subscribing to all data that match your criteria. Maximum number of items per order is 500. Orders listing more than 500 itemIds have to be split, and subscriptions must be used instead of search-based orders that match more than 500 items.

Minimum individual order or subscription is 1 hectare. You can order or subscribe to smaller areas, however, you will be billed for the minimum area.

itemType parameter

PlanetScope data are available as multiple item types, of which Sentinel Hub supports PSScene.

productBundle parameter

PlanetScope data can be ordered through Sentinel Hub either as scaled top of the atmosphere reflectance or surface reflectance, according to the requested asset type. Furthermore, 4-band and 8-band assets are available. The cost does not increase when ordering 8 bands; however, significantly more data is available as 4-band imagery than as 8-band.

The value of the productBundle parameter specifies what will be ordered:

harmonizeTo parameter

Harmonization tool can optionally be applied to harmonize PSScene surface reflectance products to Sentinel-2 values.

The user can turn off the harmonization tool by setting "harmonizeTo" to "NONE" when placing an order. Due to the interdependency between supported harmonizations and other parameters, harmonizeTo has no default value and must therefore always be explicitly specified.

Other parameters

Other parameters are set by SH and cannot be changed by the user.

More information:

• https://developers.planet.com/apis/orders/tools/#tools-reference
• https://developers.planet.com/apis/orders/product-bundles-reference/

Note: If you would need any other PlanetScope product, please contact us.

Once your order is successfully finished the ordered data will be available in one of your BYOC collections. The tiles in the collection will correspond to PlanetScope scenes. To access the data you will need the id of this collection.

Accessing PlanetScope Data

Accessing of the PlanetScope data is similar to accessing any other BYOC data. All processing and filtering options listed there can be used. However, the settings specific for accessing of PlantScope data are listed below.

Endpoint Locations

Filtering Options

collectionId

Use the id of the BYOC collection into which your PlanetScope data was delivered as a value of parameter input.data.type in the process API requests. See BYOC data access for more information.

Available Bands and Data

This chapter will explain the bands and data which can be set in the evalscript input object. Any string listed in the column Name can be an element of the input.bands array in your evalscript.

The optical band wavelengths depend on the sensor the data was captured with. The description column below specifies the wavelengths for the newest PSB.SD instrument. The values for the older instruments PS2 and PS2.SD can be found here.

Item Type PSScene

* Only included when ordering 8-band bundles, only available for the instrument PSB.SD.

** dataMask has no source resolution as it is calculated for each output pixel.

Note: Band names were updated in March 2024 for consistency. Previously the band names were: CoastalBlue, Blue, GreenI, Green, Yellow, Red, RedEdge, NIR, UDM2_Clear, UDM2_Snow, UDM2_Shadow, UDM2_LightHaze, UDM2_HeavyHaze, UDM2_Cloud, UDM2_Confidence, UDM. Although evalscripts with the old band names still work, we recommend always use the new band names.

Item Type PSScene4Band (deprecated)

Note: PSScene4Band is deprecated and cannot be ordered since November 1st 2022. This only applies to products that have already been ordered.

The optical bands for PSScene4Band item type are named numerically B1-B4.

* Only included if the productBundle field is set to analytic_udm2 or analytic_sr_udm2.

** dataMask has no source resolution as it is calculated for each output pixel.

Units

The data values for each band in your custom script are presented in the units as specified here. In case more than one unit is available for a given band, you may optionally set the value of input.units in your evalscript setup function to one of the values in the Sentinel Hub Units column. Doing so will present data in that unit. The Sentinel Hub units parameter combines the physical quantity and corresponding units of measurement values. As such, some names more closely resemble physical quantities, others resemble units of measurement.

The Source Format specifies how and with what precision the digital numbers (DN) from which the unit is derived are encoded. Bands requested in DN units contain the pixel values which are the result of ordering and preprocessing the data as explained in the chapter Ordering PlanetScope Data. Note that resampling may produce interpolated values. DN is also used whenever a band is derived computationally (like dataMask); such bands can be identified by having DN units and N/A source format.

For PlanetScope bands, DN are the default and only unit. Reflectance values can be obtained for the optical bands using the simple formula: reflectance = DN / 10000.

The Typical Range indicates what values are common for a given band and unit, however outliers can be expected.

Mosaicking

All mosaicking types are supported.

Examples

PlanetScope examples