Known Issues - NISAR Data User Guide

NISAR products have been released with three different maturity levels, and each release has a unique suite of known issues. This page focuses on known issues with the VALIDATED product collections.

To learn about the known issues for PROVISIONAL or BETA products, click the buttons below.

PROVISIONAL Known Issues BETA Known Issues

Validated Product Known Issues¶

The VALIDATED products released in November 2026 are fully calibrated and validated.

While these products meet calibration and validation requirements for the mission, there are some known issues and limitations that users should be aware of. Some of the issues are limitations inherent to the mission data, while others have the potential to be addressed in the future using new processing approaches.

Known issues with the NISAR data are tracked in Table 1, and additional issues that surface over time will be added as information becomes available. Entries will be updated as issues are resolved or determined to be permanent.

If you encounter issues with NISAR products that are not addressed here, please post them to NASA’s Earthdata Forum.

Known Issues Table¶

Each known issue is summarized in Table 1, with a link provided to a more detailed description.

Table 1:NISAR Known Issues Table

Issue Summary	Date Added	Status
Calibration of earlier data	12 Nov 2026	Expect to fix in reprocessing campaign
GUNW phase artifact from squint compensation	12 Nov 2026	Expect to be fixed with next release
Customized Copernicus DEM v1.3 latitude band transitions	12 Nov 2026	Issue ongoing
Valid mask fraction metadata not yet searchable	12 Nov 2026	Expected to be resolved Dec 2026
Stripes in SLC data from loopback residuals	12 Nov 2026	Working to develop mitigation techniques
Joint mode 40 MHz products show larger-than-usual residual radiometric bands	12 Nov 2026	Issue ongoing
Joint mode data gaps	12 Nov 2026	Working to develop mitigation techniques
Mixed CRIDS for transitional interferometry products	12 Nov 2026	Will be reprocessed in future
Residual radiometric and polarimetric ripples across the swath	12 Nov 2026	Working to develop mitigation techniques
Phase unwrapping in challenging environments	12 Nov 2026	Working to develop mitigation techniques
Ionospheric effects	12 Nov 2026	Improved by new coregistration approach; working to develop additional mitigation techniques
Radio Frequency Interference (RFI)	12 Nov 2026
Incomplete L0B Products	05 Nov 2026	Resolved with CRID P05036
Permanent NISAR instrument data gap between 2026-07-27 and 2026-08-10	10 Aug 2026	Permanent issue

Current Known Issues¶

These issues are currently impacting VALIDATED products. Some issues are unresolvable, but others may be mitigated in future updates to the NISAR processing software.

Known Issues: P05036 Release¶

Known issues associated with CRID P05036 (the software version used for first validated data release) are documented in the release notes. Issue descriptions from the release notes are linked in Table 1.

Permanent data gap¶

No data was collected by the NISAR platform between 2026-07-27T22:03:25Z and 2026-08-10T00:55:27Z. There are not currently any VALIDATED products available for this time range, but the data gap will also be present in the VALIDATED collections once the reprocessing campaign is complete.

Resolved Known Issues¶

Incomplete L0B Products¶

Resolved with CRID P05036

One of the most critical issues with the PROVISIONAL products was a timestamp issue that resulted in incomplete L0B products. This manifested in downstream product types as a range of artifacts, including defocused RSLC images, missing data, and decorrelation in InSAR products. The majority of issues with PROVISIONAL products reported to the Earthdata Forum were caused by this issue, but it was resolved before VALIDATED data products were processed.