Empowering Antarctic End-Users: A New Era Of Satellite Data Accessibility

Created 26/03/2026

Updated 26/03/2026

Digital Earth Antarctica is an exciting new platform being developed by Geoscience Australia, funded through an Australian government commitment to support Earth Observations into the future. The platform will provide easy access to analysis ready, continental-scale satellite data for Antarctica and its sea ice. To make data more accessible we are lowering the technical skill required of end-users by implementing open data cube technology and improving data quality with processing techniques that are tailored to Antarctic conditions. Our initial work with the USGS/NASA’s Landsat and ESA’s Sentinel 1/2 satellites will unlock decades-long radar and optical time-series datasets and empower environmental managers, researchers and policy makers to maximise data potential.

This presentation will introduce the Polar Data community to Digital Earth Antarctica and how it empowers end-users within the Antarctic data ecosystem; illustrated using our newly released Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data products. Sentinel-1 imagery is important in the Antarctic context due to radar’s ability to penetrate cloud and polar darkness, enabling year-round monitoring of the Antarctic ice sheet and surrounding areas of sea ice. However, global providers do not currently produce analysis ready radar data for Antarctica within existing datasets, likely due to the complexity of ice motion and the heavy reliance on an accurate DEM. To deliver an analysis-ready product tailored to Antarctica, we have worked with end-users, international experts, global data providers and researchers to ensure our data is high quality and fit-for-purpose. With this product, the program has begun to empower end-users to map the distribution of stationary sea ice (‘fast ice’), icebergs and melt ponds around the Antarctic continent.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Empowering Antarctic End-Users: A New Era Of Satellite Data Accessibility
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/76ff41b9-000d-4abe-a188-c5b782c8c950
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/03/2026
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Empowering Antarctic End-Users: A New Era Of Satellite Data Accessibility". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/empowering-antarctic-end-users-a-new-era-of-satellite-data-accessibility