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Planet Completes Acquisition of Sinergise; Set to Expand Planet’s Earth Data Platform

When ordering PlanetScope data, users have two main options - Individual Orders and Subscriptions.

What is a Subscriptions API and how does it differ from Order by Query?

When configuring a subscription, the user subscribes to a specific area of interest (polygon), and then gets all the products for that parcel in a specified (including open) time range. This option is especially useful for those interested in an ongoing monitoring of a specific area, such as an agricultural parcel. Subscriptions is similar to Order by Query, but there are several important differences between the two:

  • using Subscriptions API, there is no limit in how many products can be ordered, while in Order by Query, the limit is 250 products.
  • subscriptions API time range can cover not only past and present dates, but also future dates. A user can thus subscribe to all the data for a specific parcel for the past 5 years, as well as for all data in the future (as long as the commercial subscription is active). Doing so, past data products will be ingested right away, and future data products will be ingested automatically as soon as available.

Subscription API pricing There is no additional cost for use of this option. PlanetScope data are offered under Hectares under Management, which is priced per area monitored per year anyway (See this FAQ.

How to configure a Subscription?

See documentation on PlanetScope subscriptions, and check the API reference as well. You will need a Sentinel Hub account and PlanetScope quota purchased to order a subscription. If you are conducting research or if you need commercial data for precommercial exploitation, you can get your Sentinel Hub account and PlanetScope quota sponsored by ESA’s Network of Resources.

Ordering TPDI data is easiest using our Requests Builder. See also our commercial data webinar, where you can see how to make individual orders in Requests Builder (making subscriptions orders is very similar to PlanetScope Order by Query).

  1. Set the desired time range. You can set any time range you like, including an open one. To get an open subscription, leave the “To” parameter empty (""To":""). This will extend your description indefinitely.
  2. Set your area of interest
  3. Set the maximum allowed cloud coverage and serch for data to see the available products (not including future products - in case of time-range extending into the future, new products will be added)
  4. Specify the name of your subscription
  5. Specify a target collection either manually, or by selecting from the dropdown menu. If you want to create a new collection for this purpose, select “create a new collection”. For each subsequent subscription, it is recommended to ingest into an existing collection. Note that only Planet collections with compatible bands will be available to chose from; for example, if your Subscriptions order has analytic_sr_udm2 set as the Product Bundle, only your Planet collections ingested with analytic_sr_udm2 Product Bundle will be offered.
  6. Enter your Planet API key (acquired after purchasing PlanetScope TPDI quota)
  7. Place your order by clicking the Place Order button. This will not yet execute the subscription. The order status will be CREATED.
  8. Confirm your order by clicking the Start button. This will run your subscription order. Note that order and status will change to RUNNING. Note that in case your subscription extends into the future, the order will stay RUNNING until the “To” date passes and until all products are ingested. All the products that are already available will ingest right away (might take a few hours if there are many).

Subscription

  • Next, check your Subscription in the Dashboard. Open the 3d Party Data tab (1) and toggle on the Subsriptions pannel (2). Here you will see all your commercial subscriptions listed.
  • Opening the Subscription will show the collection ID (green, to be used to access data), order status (blue), geometry (violet) and ingested products, their status (DELIVERED, PROCESSING, DONE or FAILED), as well as the creation date (orange).

Subscription info

Visualize Subscription data

Visualizing commercial subscription data is no different than visualizing commercial data ordered using the Order option. See our webinar on commercial data to learn all about commercial data, including how to visualize it.