This is a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite. Data is available from USGS or Copernicus Open Access Hub (Directions) . There are two satellites on opposite sides of the earth, and each revisits the same locations every 10 days, so one will visit every 5 days. Imagery is acquired at 1030 local time, which minimizes the effect of shadows while minimizing potential cloud cover. This is the close to the same time as Landsat and SPOT-5, allowing integration with their archive for time-series studies.
First data in 2015.
To identify the desired tile(s)
Complex data structure, JP2 file format; the imagery is buried 4 levels down in directories with very long names
Multiple resolutions complicates intelligent display (unlike Landsat, which provides the TIR bands at the same resolution, with only the Pan band a different size)
Square tiles, with data right out to the edge in many cases. The tile only contains data from a single satellite pass, so the coverage edges will lead to incomplete tiles. The tile name uses MGRS, and has a T for tile, two digits for UTM zone, a letter for the latitude band, and two letters for the 100K UTM square.
MICRODEM will use GDAL to convert the JP2 files to Geotiff . There is an option on the Imagery tab of the options form on whether to keep the JP2 files (needed if you want to use ACOLITE) .
References
Last revision 6/25/2022