After the massive earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria on February 6 and killed thousands, NASA on Saturday said it is working to share its aerial views and data from space to aid relief and recovery workers
Scenes collected before and after the earthquake were used by a team of scientists from the Earth Observatory of Singapore and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to create something called a damage proxy map for Turkey
These maps compare before and after radar images of a given event to see how the landscape has changed
“NASA’s hearts and minds are with those impacted by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson
“NASA is our eyes in the sky, and our teams of experts are working hard to provide valuable information from our Earth-observing fleet to first responders on the ground,” he added
One of NASA’s key capabilities is an expertise with synthetic aperture radar, or SAR
Viewing Earth in all weather conditions, day or night, SAR is used to measure how the ground moves and built landscape changes after this type of event
In addition to assessing damage, NASA scientists use space- and ground-based observations to improve the agency’s ability to understand related events that cascade from the original natural disaster