SeaHawk Image Requests

SeaHawk HawkEye imagery composite collected as of July 2021. Credit: Norman Kuring NASA GSFC

We are pleased to open up to the international research community the opportunity to request that specific targets or regions of interest be acquired on a “best-effort” basis by the HawkEye Instrument which is flying on the SeaHawk CubeSat. 

As part of our commitment to provide FREE data to the community, we created this portal to submit requests for specific imagery acquisition. However, users must understand the selection criteria and the limitations involved. See guidelines below.

Our group will carefully review all the requests received and will schedule the images that will be recorded for each 3-week cycle (SeaHawk revisit time). Requests will be selected based on the following criteria: users’ justification, priority, and availability (more info in guidelines below). Although we will do our best to accommodate all requests, users must remember that this is a proof-of-concept mission and there is no guarantee.

The list of selected requests will be published on this website, please check back here to see if your image was selected. As each new 10-day schedule is uploaded to the spacecraft, the images that are scheduled for acquisition will appear on a map and the daily activity list. As soon as data is collected and processed, it will be published on the ocean color website and will be freely available for anyone to download. 

Photos starting from the left: Greenland Ice Swirls, Caspian Sea, Glacier Bay (Alaska), Dalian (China), Caspian Sea 

Photo Credit: Alan Holmes and Norman Kuring   

Guidelines

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU MAKE A REQUEST

• Image requests will be considered beginning July 18th, 2021
• There is an average of 15 images captured per day and it is hoped that 50% of these will eventually be filled by requests from the community.
• At this time, we request that you submit no more than 2 target requests per 3-week planning cycle
• Recognize that cloud cover or sun glint might affect my target location.
• Please verify that the target dates and locations you are requesting are correct. 
• Since all images are manually geolocated by us, we recommended that your requested target include some part of a coastline if possible. 
• While open ocean images will be accepted, especially in support of research cruises, understand that the navigational accuracy of those is going to be less accurate.
• The Lat/Long you submit will be assumed to be the central point of the target image (~200km x 700km), therefore we recommend that it is within 100 km from land. 
• Some of the technical reasons why images may not be scheduled on a given orbit include:
  1. the power constraint that images may not be taken within 12 minutes of either an x-band data downlink at Wallops or Alaska or other scheduled images.
  2. conflict with the two orbits selected each week during which a new 10-day schedule is uploaded from the Glasgow mission operations center.
  3. the image is significantly beyond the low solar zenith angle region for that time of year.
• As each new 10-day schedule is uploaded to the spacecraft, the images that are scheduled for acquisition will appear on a map and the daily activity list.

Photos starting from the left: Northern Persian Gulf, Chinese Coast, Anticosti Island (Canada), Lake Baikal (Russia)

Photo Credit: Alan Holmes and Norman Kuring