Yzabelle Bostyn
NASA has revealed Spain’s blackout could be seen from SPACE in eerie images captured by satellites.
The power outage that rocked Spain and Portugal on April 28 has been captured by three polar satellites operated by NASA.
Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 tracked the incident’s evolution throughout the night, providing important insight.
The satellites circle Earth from pole to pole and made six passes over the affected area during the blackout.
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PHOTO: NOAA/NASA (VIIRS/DNB), processed with Black Marble
A cloudless sky also provided extremely clear images, allowing us to understand the emergency response to the incident with surprising clarity.
“By overlaying the six satellite passes and applying NASA’s night-time algorithms, we can identify large green spots suddenly appearing and gradually fading,” explains Alejandro Sanchez de Miguel, researcher at the Andalucian Astrophysics Institute (IAA-CSIC).
The project lead of several ESA-supported initiatives monitoring light pollution from space, Sanchez de Miguel explained the green dots indicate the absence of light while white lights indicate stable electricity supply.
“This distribution is consistent with electrical company reports and the gradual return to normality,” he added.
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PHOTO: NASA
The images can help authorities coordinate emergency services, prioritise repairs and assess their infrastructure resilience.
These reports may help develop and improve monitoring systems to provide early warnings of grid failures.
It is also thought events like the blackout could provide rare research opportunities for the European Space Agency (ESA) to look at disruptions to normal day-night rhythms and their effect on living organisms.
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