Umbra Space

Umbra is an American synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imaging company that sells on-demand taskings for satellite imagery.

URL

https://umbra.space/

Description

Use Umbra to task (request) a high resolution SAR image in most places of the world.

Unlike conventional optical satellite imagery, SAR works by sending a radio wave and listening to the reflection. Some objects, such as metallic vehicles and the 90 degree angles of buildings, reflect lots of the radio signal back to the satellite. Other features, like soil and vegetation, scatter the signal in many directions and reflect less. Still others, like the surface of calm water, reflect almost all of the signal away from the satellite. This variation produces an image of the Earth's surface. Other SAR satellites include Sentinel-1, which can be accessed from Sentinel Hub and Copernicus Browser.

Umbra images can be tasked through Umbra Canopy, Umbra's online interface. Contact Umbra's sales team to create an account, or use SkyFi.

Archival Umbra images can be purchased from SkyFi.

Cost

• Free

• Partially Free

• Paid

Requesting an image from Umbra starts at $675 for 1-meter resolution, and can be over $5000 for the highest quality. Umbra's price sheet is public.

Level of difficulty

Requirements

Paid account

Limitations

Umbra does not allow tasking of politically and militarily sensitive areas, including near Ukraine, Israel and Palestine. For operational reasons, Umbra cannot image the far north.

SAR imagery is more difficult to interpret than optical imagery. While SAR images may look superficially similar to conventional imagery, the image formation process produces distinct artifacts. Issues like multipath reflections and range overlap can produce unexpected or misleading effects that must be understood to interpret accurately. For more information about SAR and SAR interpretation, the book The Essentials of SAR, by Thomas Ager, is a good resource.

Ethical Considerations

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Guides and articles

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Tool provider

Umbra, U.S.

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Page maintainer
Logan Williams/Bellingcat Team