Space Satellite Data Reveals the Pandemic’s Effects on Earth

Space Satellite Data Reveals the Pandemic’s Effects on Earth

NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) teamed up to collectively leverage Earth-observing data captured by their many satellites and sensors to monitor and chronicle planet-wide shifts in socioeconomic activities and the environment as the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic. 


The space agencies on Thursday jointly launched a public web portal—the COVID-19 Earth Observation Dashboard—that synthesizes their most relevant data and provides users with the capability to interactively view changes across air and water quality, greenhouse gases, city nightlights, economic indicators, agricultural production and more catalyzed by the health crisis.


“As this pandemic spreads across the globe, scientists began to see from space how patterns of human activity were changing and how those changes affected the environment. The pandemic was not only leaving a staggering toll of human suffering—it was having a global impact that we could document from space,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said among other officials from the agencies on a call with reporters Thursday. “The three agencies realized that if we could combine forces, we could bring a more powerful set of analytical tools to bear on this fast-moving crisis.”


The dashboard’s producers hope that it will enable city and health officials, policymakers and any others interested to explore and probe the pandemic’s short- and long-term impacts on the planet and society. 


Each agency felt an urgent need to harness its available space assets in support of their governments and communities as soon as the pandemic materialized as a critical emergency, reporters heard during the briefing. Upon recognizing that the crisis was global in nature, ..

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