✨ Product Update: Analysis-Ready PlanetScope Version 1.0.1 ✨

Planet is excited to announce the release of Analysis-Ready PlanetScope version 1.0.1.

Changes in version 1.0.1
Several image quality optimizations and bug fixes
Additional resources

Changes in Version 1.0.1

Analysis-Ready PlanetScope (ARPS) version 1.0.1 introduces numerous incremental image quality improvements and key bug fixes across geometric quality, radiometric performance, and cloud masking. Notably, ARPS 1.0.1 addresses distortions in archived SuperDove data, improves radiometric accuracy in data-poor regions, and enhances geometric consistency across scenes. These refinements, while minor, are designed to deliver a more reliable and robust product.

Image Quality

ARPS v1.0.1 includes several changes aimed at enhancing image quality broadly. A fix for occasional distortions in archive SuperDove data and addressing data loss due to snow are introduced. This release resolves distortions that were sometimes present in the archived SuperDove imagery. It also addresses a bug that sometimes caused entire data chunks to be dropped during forward fill when even small amounts of snow were present (including at mountain peaks). Other bug fixes with minor impact include correcting the calculation of cloud fractions from masks, resolving an issue with resampling images along nodata boundaries, and keeping scenes improperly removed in significantly cloudy regions.

Geometric Improvements

Several modifications have been made to improve the accuracy of geometric alignment. A correction for alignment shifts caused by a new PlanetScope (PS) reference frame has been implemented. This is important as it addresses a potential offset, mostly less than 1 pixel but sometimes 1-2 pixels or rarely more, between images acquired before and after 2024-10-15. The threshold for addressing shift misalignments in clear-sky data has been reduced. This adjustment will lead to better scene-to-scene geometric alignment, particularly for scenes with larger portions of non-clear pixels. A bug erroneously rejecting some pixel rectification was corrected, likely decreasing the incidence of misaligned images.

Radiometric Improvements

Several fixes related to radiometric quality are included in v1.0.1. There is now more reliable geometric alignment between reference and observed data, improving the overall radiometric performance. A bug in the process of assembling reference data has also been fixed. This fix is expected to improve the fit to the FORCE reference data. The system now ensures that TOAR (Top of Atmosphere Reflectance) data are within the expected range after topographic correction, preventing some rare anomalies associated with the topographic correction processing. More calibration data is now used in data-poor regions of long Time-of-Interest (TOI) datasets. This change might be most noticeable for long TOIs, including 2017, a period with less available data, potentially leading to improved radiometry in that year or other data-poor regions.

Cloud Mask Improvements

The approach to cloud masking has been updated with this release. ARPS 1.0.1 will now take haze detections from the PlanetScope UDM or the FORCE cloud mask. This is a reversion to using the existing UDM for haze detection due to indications that the customized haze detection method was underperforming.