The ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) mission measures the temperature of plants to better understand how much water plants need and how they respond to stress. ECOSTRESS is attached to the International Space Station (ISS) and collects data globally between 52° N and 52° S latitudes. A map of the acquisition coverage can be found in figure 2 on the ECOSTRESS website.

The ECOSTRESS Swath Geolocation Instantaneous Level 1B Global (ECO_L1B_GEO) Version 2 data product provides the geolocation information for the radiance values retrieved in the ECO_L1B_RAD Version 2 data product. The geolocation product gives geo-tagging to each of the radiance pixels. The geolocation processing corrects the ISS-reported ephemeris and attitude data by image matching with a global ortho-base derived from Landsat data, and then assigns latitude and longitude values to each of the Level 1 radiance pixels. When image matching is successful, the data are geolocated to better than 50 meter (m) accuracy. The ECO_L1B_GEO data product is provided as swath data.

The ECO_L1B_GEO data product contains data layers for latitude and longitude values, solar and view geometry information, surface height, and the fraction of pixel on land versus water distributed in HDF5 format.

Known Issues

• Geolocation accuracy: In cases where scenes were not successfully matched with the ortho-base, the geolocation error is significantly larger; the worst-case geolocation error for uncorrected data is 7 kilometers (km). Within the metadata of the ECO_L1B_GEO file, if the field "L1GEOMetadata/OrbitCorrectionPerformed" is "True", the data was corrected, and geolocation accuracy should be better than 50 m. If this field is "False", then the data was processed without correcting the geolocation and will have up to 7 km geolocation error.
• Data acquisition gap: ECOSTRESS was launched on June 29, 2018, and moved to autonomous science operations on August 20, 2018, following a successful in-orbit checkout period. On September 29, 2018, ECOSTRESS experienced an anomaly with its primary mass storage unit (MSU). ECOSTRESS has a primary and secondary MSU (A and B). On December 5, 2018, the instrument was switched to the secondary MSU and science operations resumed. On March 14, 2019, the secondary MSU experienced a similar anomaly, temporarily halting science acquisitions. On May 15, 2019, a new data acquisition approach was implemented, and science acquisitions resumed.
• Data acquisition gap: From February 8 to February 16, 2020, an ECOSTRESS instrument issue resulted in a data anomaly that created striping in band 4 (10.5 micron). These data products have been reprocessed and are available for download. No ECOSTRESS data were acquired on February 17, 2020, due to the instrument being in SAFEHOLD. Data acquired following the anomaly have not been affected.
• Data acquisition: ECOSTRESS has now successfully returned to 5-band mode after being in 3-band mode since 2019. This feature was successfully enabled following a Data Processing Unit firmware update (version 4.1) to the payload on April 28, 2023. To better balance contiguous science data scene variables, 3-band collection is currently being interleaved with 5-band acquisitions over the orbital day/night periods.
• Solar Array Obstruction: Some ECOSTRESS scenes may be affected by solar array obstructions from the International Space Station (ISS), potentially impacting data quality of obstructed pixels. The 'FieldOfViewObstruction' metadata field is included in all Version 2 products to indicate possible obstructions:
  • Before October 24, 2024 (orbits prior to 35724): The field is present but was not populated and does not reliably identify affected scenes.
  • On or after October 24, 2024 (starting with orbit 35724): The field is populated and generally accurate, except for late December 2024, when a temporary processing error may have caused false positives.
  • A list of scenes confirmed to be affected by obstructions is available and is recommended for verifying historical data (before October 24, 2024) and scenes from late December 2024.
• The ISS native pointing information is coarse relative to ECOSTRESS pixels, so ECOSTRESS geolocation is improved through image matching with a basemap. Metadata in the L1B_GEO file shows the success of this geolocation improvement, using categorizations "best", "good", "suspect", and "poor". We recommend that users use only "best" and "good" scenes for evaluations where geolocation is important (e.g., comparison to field sites). For some scenes, this metadata is not reflected in the higher-level products (e.g., land surface temperature, evapotranspiration, etc.). While this metadata is always available in the geolocation product, to save users additional download, we have produced a summary text file that includes the geolocation quality flags for all scenes from launch to present. At a later date, all higher-level products will reflect the geolocation quality flag correctly (the field name is GeolocationAccuracyQA).
• During the time period of May 15th, 2025, through July 1st, 2025, ECOSTRESS data was noisier than expected. Cycling the payload resolved the issue, but researchers should use all levels of ECOSTRESS data acquired during this time period with caution.

Improvements/Changes from Previous Version

• If the initial co-registration is of poor quality or fails, up to four retries are attempted using modified parameters to match the scene. See Section 4.2 of the User Guide.