How to Acquire Remote Sensing Data

Remote Sensing Data/Satellite Image Download Portals:

Satellite image is main source and input data for remote sensing studies. These input in the form of satellite image can be also used in GIS database generation as well as for analysis in GIS environment. 

So acquiring or ordering satellite images is nowadays a very simple and easy process just like purchasing on any e-commerce portal. 

Four simple steps will explain the acquiring process of the satellite images.

• Select the interest area using polygon in shapefile, coordinates, or city/location name
• Select the type of satellite image
• Browse the searched image and check the image quality 
• In the last download/order the satellite image through the cart

There is a variety of satellite images available on web portals, provided and supported by many government and other agencies. 

These satellite images are available in paid form as well as free of cost on web portals. 

Different web portals are defined below, from where one can search, preview and download satellite images.

S. No.	Source	Satellite Images For Download	Weblink
1	Bhuvan Indian Geo-Platform of ISRO	The platform is well-built but most of the data is for India only. This includes IMS-1 (Hyperspectral), Cartosat, Ocean Sat and Resource Sat – which are all Indian satellites.	https://bhuvan-app3.nrsc.gov.in/data
	National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC)	To purchase Indian and Foreign Satellite Images	https://www.nrsc.gov.in/EOP_irsdata_Objective_New
2	GLOVIS	Digital Orthophoto Quadrangle (DOQs), EO-1 ALI (Earth Observing-1 Advanced Land Imaging), EO-1 Hyperion (Earth Observing-1 Hyperion), Global Land Survey (GLS), Landsat 4-5 TM (L4-5 TM C1 Level-1), Landsat 7 ETM+ (L7 ETM+ C1 Level-1), Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS (L8 OLI/TIRS C1 Level-1), Sentinel-2, ISRO ResourceSAT 1 and 2 – AWIFS Sensor, ISRO ResourceSAT 1 and 2 – LISS-3 Sensor, GeoEye’s OrbView-3 (OrbView-3)	https://glovis.usgs.gov/
3	NASA Earth Observation	Data on atmosphere, land, Ocean, energy, environment. The datasets are available in the JPEG, PNG, Google Earth and GeoTIFF Format	https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
4	USGS Earth Explorer	Satellite and aerial images, of Land Data Products and Services such as Landsat Series Data, Hyperion’ s hyperspectral data, disperse Radar data and MODIS & AVHRR land surface reflectance.	https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
5	ESA’s Sentinel data	It provides complete, access to Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3  products	https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/home
6	NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)	Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) , Environmental Satellite (GOES) , NOAA’s Geostationary	https://www.noaa.gov/
7	Vito Vision	It provides coarse vegetation data from PROBA-V, SPOT-Vegetation and METOP.	https://www.vito-eodata.be/PDF/portal/Application.html#Home
8	JAXA’s Global ALOS 3D World	The ALOS World 3d is a 30-meter spatial resolution digital surface model (DSM) constructed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA).	http://global.jaxa.jp/press/2015/05/20150518_daichi.html
9	Global Land Cover Facility – Derived Satellite Data	Global land cover data from Landsat, MODIS and AVHRR satellite imagery.	http://www.landcover.org/
10	Digital Globe	It is the largest commercial satellite data supplier in the world… If you want to play with some of the sharpest satellite data in the world,	https://www.digitalglobe.com/
11	UNAVCO	The website is flooded with Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites sources	https://www.unavco.org/