AI Insight
NASA's Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program provides researchers with licensed access to high-resolution commercial Earth observation data from over 20 vendor partners to complement NASA's freely available satellite data. The program facilitates calibration and validation partnerships, conducts transparent data quality evaluations, and funds development of scientific applications to convert commercial satellite data into research solutions. An upcoming webinar will detail program updates including available data types, evaluation processes, licensing agreements, and new data access capabilities through the Satellite Data Explorer platform.
Why it matters
The CSDA program expands Earth science research capabilities by providing access to high-frequency, high-resolution, and taskable commercial satellite data that supplements NASA's existing satellite observations. This hybrid approach of combining freely available government data with commercial datasets enables more comprehensive environmental monitoring and accelerates the development of actionable scientific applications.
Understand the Science
NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition Program is a science‑enabling program that provides licensed access to high‑quality commercial Earth observation data, strengthens data quality through calibration/validation (cal/val) partnerships and transparent evaluations, and funds the development of science and application use cases to help turn commercial data into actionable research and applied solutions.
The program augments NASA’s gold standard fleet of freely and openly available Earth observing satellite observations and data products with high-resolution, high-frequency, and taskable commercial datasets.
During this webinar, speakers will provide an overview of the CSDA program’s activities and progress. Topics will include data modalities available through the program, updates to the evaluation process, the new cal/val initiative, and the status of existing task orders with CSDA data providers. In addition, presenters will cover the types of end-user licensing agreements, data availability and access, new data archive and tasking capabilities available through the Satellite Data Explorer, user engagement opportunities, and new learning resources.