[AlbertoGP]

Hey, thanks for this link, it looks interesting but I’ll have to find out what kinds of measurements they provide. The User Guide seems to have a complete list:

https://scihub.copernicus.eu/userguide/

Then they have more details in their Technical Guides, for instance this one for Sentinel-5P: https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/sentinel/technical-guide...

There are several interesting things there, like CH₄, SO₂, etc. They also include data derived from “Suomi-NPP VIIRS Clouds” which is the NOAA instrument used by the Gas Flare Tracker, matched to the ESA data.

Here is the Sentinel-3 OLCI Technical Guide: https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/sentinel/technical-guide...

It would be great news if they changed their policies in these years.

(A couple of minutes later, checking while writing this comment...) Oh... “Please login to access our services...” Ok, I might take a look at it later.

Thanks anyway for the link, I might have seen a previous version of this page but I don’t remember seeing the detailed product (measurements) list. It does look more promising that it used to.

Meanwhile in USA: “The VIIRS Nightfire (VNF) digital data access will be transitioned to restricted access for organizations that have approved data user license agreements with EOG. Commercial users can also be approved, but will be expected to make annual payments to cover a portion of the VNF program costs.” https://eogdata.mines.edu/products/vnf/

[enriquto]

The ESA is just as open as nasa, and the freely available Copernicus images benefit US citizens as well. This pissing contest that you try to start is ridiculous. Americans and Europeans are very happy with each other in this regard.

[AlbertoGP]

I’m sorry I wasn’t clear: the last paragraph quoting the current conditions for using the VIIRS Nightfire data, where as you correctly note the conditions of use are similar, is a change that happened afterwards. I should have written “Meanwhile in USA, things have changed: ...”.

During the years when I worked on the Oil Spill Monitor and Gas Flare tracker, from 2013 to 2019, NOAA gave the data completely without conditions: anyone could go to the Suomi-NPP website and just download the CSV files without login or anything else, and not just the current one (the satellite does one pass per night over the whole world) but also historic data.

Now things have converged, and your statement that "ESA is just as open as NASA" is, at least when comparing the Sentinel vs. the VIIRS Nighfire data, absolutely correct.