Retrieve detections

GET https://contrails.googleapis.com/v2/detections: Get contrail detections in GeoJSON LineString format.

If successful, the response will be a FeatureCollection in GeoJSON format. Note that it is possible to return an empty FeatureCollection if the time range is out of scope (e.g. searching for detected contrails in the future). Further, detections are not guaranteed to be consistent as detection models update and data is backfilled.

Query parameters

Parameters
start_time	string Required. Start time of request. Format: ISO 8601 datetime string Example: 2026-01-20T21:00:00Z
end_time	string Required. End time of request (inclusive). Note that end_time cannot exceed start_time by greater than 24 hours. Format: ISO 8601 datetime string Example: 2026-01-20T22:00:00Z
satellite_origins[]	string Optional. Valid values are GOES-EAST-FULL-DISK, HIMAWARI-FULL-DISK, and MTG-000-FULL-DISK, representing the GOES_EAST, Himawari and MTG satellites, respectively. If supplied, this endpoint will only return detected contrails from satellites specified within satellite_origins. If not supplied, returns detected contrails from all applicable satellite data providers. Format: string array Example: ["GOES-EAST-FULL-DISK", "HIMAWARI-FULL-DISK"]

Examples

• To retrieve all contrail detections for a specific point in time:

  response = requests.get(
    url="https://contrails.googleapis.com/v2/detections",
    params={"start_time": "2026-01-27T12:00:00Z",
            "end_time": "2026-01-27T12:10:00Z"},
    headers={"x-goog-api-key": API_KEY},
  )
  

• To retrieve contrail detections for a specific point in time, limited to Himawari detections:

  response = requests.get(
    url="https://contrails.googleapis.com/v2/detections",
    params={"start_time": "2026-01-27T12:00:00Z",
            "end_time": "2026-01-27T12:10:00Z",
            "satellite_origins": ["HIMAWARI-FULL-DISK"]}
    headers={"x-goog-api-key": API_KEY},
  )
  

  or in CURL:

  curl "https://contrails.sandbox.googleapis.com/v2/detections?\
  key=API_KEY&\
  start_time=2026-01-27T12:00:00Z&\
  end_time=2026-01-27T12:10:00Z&\
  satellite_origins=HIMAWARI-FULL-DISK"
  

A successful response with detected contrails will look something like this:

{
  "type": "FeatureCollection",
  "features": [
    {
      "type": "Feature",
      "geometry": {
        "type": "LineString",
        "coordinates": [
          [
            90.06765747070312,
            44.201324462890625
          ],
          [
            90.99974060058594,
            43.65225601196289
          ]
        ]
      },
      "properties": {
        "time": "2026-03-10T00:00:00+00:00",
        "satellite_origin": "HIMAWARI-FULL-DISK"
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "Feature",
      "geometry": {
        "type": "LineString",
        "coordinates": [
          [
            105.36386108398438,
            -1.7198446989059448
          ],
          [
            105.7318115234375,
            -2.5787696838378906
          ]
        ]
      },
      "properties": {
        "time": "2026-03-10T00:00:00+00:00",
        "satellite_origin": "HIMAWARI-FULL-DISK"
      }
    }
  ]
}