RADARSAT Constellation Mission: Satellite Acquisition Plans for Canada and Global Coverage

The RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) dataset contains future and past acquisition plans for a three-satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system. The plans are published by Natural Resources Canada to meet the imaging demands of the Government of Canada, with daily revisits of Canada's territory and access to 90% of the world's surface. Future plans are published every two weeks, and past plans are published monthly.

Use Cases

• Plan downstream analysis workflows based on scheduled Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data acquisitions.
• Monitor environmental changes and climate change indicators using planned daily revisit data over Canada.
• Support maritime and border security operations by tracking acquisition coverage of Canada's maritime approaches.
• Coordinate natural resource management activities with known future satellite imaging schedules.

Strengths

• Plans provide daily revisits of Canada's territory and maritime approaches.
• Acquisition plans offer daily access to 90% of the world's surface.
• Publication schedule is clearly defined: future plans every two weeks, past plans monthly.

Limitations

• Acquisition plans may be changed without notice to meet Government of Canada needs.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Natural Resources Canada

Collection Method

Planned acquisition schedules for the RADARSAT Constellation Mission satellites.

Time Range

Covers future two-week windows and past monthly periods on a rolling basis.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-09 18:16:05.702015; future plans are published on a bi-weekly rolling schedule.

Geography

Primary focus on Canada's vast territory and maritime approaches, with global coverage of 90% of the world's surface.