Sentinel data products are distributed using a Sentinel-specific variation of the Standard Archive Format for Europe (SAFE) format specification. All the information relevant to the product is gathered into a single package. Inside this package, the specific objects containing measurement data are encoded in netCDF format.

The Sentinel-SAFE format has been designed to act as a common format for archiving and conveying data within ESA Earth Observation archiving facilities.

Sentinel-SAFE is based on the XML Formatted Data Units (XFDU) standard under development by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS). Sentinel-SAFE is a profile of XFDU, and it restricts the XFDU specifications for specific utilisation in the EO domain, providing semantics in the same domain to improve interoperability between ground segment facilities.

The sizes of SRAL/MWR products (Level-1, Level-2 WAT (water) and Level-2 LAN (land)) are based on a duty cycle with 100% SAR mode. An orbit represents a time span of two consecutive crossings of the Ascending Node (ANX). For Sentinel-3 it equates to ≈ 6 060 seconds.

The sizes of L1 SRAL products are:

·       Level-1A product: 17.5 GB/orbit

·       Level-1B-S product: 18.1 GB/orbit

·       Level--1B product: 290MB/orbit

The sizes of Level-2 WAT products are:

·       Reduced file: 1.7 MB/orbit

·       Standard file: 46 MB/orbit

·       Enhanced file: 250 MB/orbit

The sizes of Level-2 LAN products are:

·       Reduced file: 0.740 MB/orbit

·       Standard file: 43 MB/orbit

·       Enhanced file: 240 MB/orbit