First Satellite:
First, there was one boat.
The first boat.
Crossing the ocean.
The vast deep sea of blue.
The color of Planet Earth, seen from afar.The boat carried lives and possessions.
Precious possessions.
On their last journey across the ocean.
To their new home.
We used to look up at the ancient night sky for signs and directions. We saw in its starry patterns gods and deities, and in its cosmic movements we found wisdom and guidance. Stories of our ancestors, prophecies of our future—they were all up there, drifting in the darkness to be consulted for their cautionary tales and inspiring feats. Entire civilizations were governed by its rhythms, children were put to sleep with its fables. The breadth of our imagination was only limited by our Earthbound vision.
First Satellite:
They had made this journey before.
Many times before.
In their old lives,
An epoch ago.Second Satellite:
An epoch ago.First Satellite:
When they crisscrossed the oceans.Second Satellite:
Many times before.First Satellite:
From where they first came out of the ground,
To where they were refined.
And again.Second Satellite:
And again.First Satellite:
To where they were mixed and stirred.Second Satellite:
Mixed and stirred,
Cut and crushed, molded, pressed, forged, dyed and dried.
Bottled and labelled.
They darted to and fro.First Satellite:
To and fro.Second Satellite:
Breathing out their exhausted breaths in the air.
Until they were once again packaged and shipped.
Perhaps to save lives, perhaps to destroy them.
To give knowledge or take it away.
To make someone envious, or a child smile.
That was an epoch ago.First Satellite:
Such a long time ago.
Since 1972, when the first remote sensing satellite designed to observe our planet was launched into orbit, we began to look back down from the sky to read our own planetary fortunes.1 Through sensors onboard satellites, we became able to observe from uncharted viewpoints and at wavelengths beyond what human eyes can see.
Since then, we have kept track of our resources and foretold our harvests; witnessed shrinking sea ice and forests; gasped at expanding droughts and wildfires. Among these vast datasets, our modern selves have deciphered patterns, looking for signs. We now understand our planet better, predict our futures better.
Second Satellite:
Such a long time ago.
When the light shone so bright.
It was beautiful.Third Satellite:
It was beautiful.First Satellite:
It was beautiful.Second Satellite:
But it was short lived.
The data that was detected, collected, and beamed back to us was composited, processed, and translated into legible visuals, uncanny images that have since become familiar: otherworldly red forests, endlessly ubiquitous land parcels, mesmerizing fractals in the landscape.
These datasets have proved invaluable to science and a turning point in our understanding of the planet. While traditionally used to map planetary conditions, this technology can also be understood as a speculative medium, one that tells stories and holds secrets. It too can prophesize and inspire, just like the skies of ancient times.
Second Satellite:
The lakes dried up.
The boats stopped sailing.
Buried in the sand.
Like a fossil.
Waiting to be found.
Dug up.
Resurrected.So much was carried on the boat.
Third Satellite:
So much.Second Satellite:
The first boat.
So much.
On September 4, 2024, Sentinel-2C, one of the most recent Earth-observing satellites, was launched into space.2 We have come a long way since Isaac Newton placed a glass prism across the rays of the sun to begin to make sense of light and the electromagnetic spectrum. As every element in the universe has a unique light signature, we now know that the sun is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium, and we can study something as distant as the Orion Nebula some 1,300 light years away. Looking back at Earth, the same physics underpin the detection of energy radiating from our planet.
Of the many different wavelengths that sensors can detect, some fall within the small range that is visible to us, while many others, like ultraviolet, microwave, infrareds, and radar, do not. Humans are trichromats and see colors in composites of three wavelengths. Combining the datasets from any three spectral bands mapped as red, green, and blue can mimic our color vision and bring to light details otherwise hidden from us.3 Indistinguishable characteristics differentiated, illegible features highlighted, the invisible is now made visible. Remote sensing can reveal what our eyes will never see.
Third Satellite:
Since then, things started to be different.
I see something different.A new pattern.
A new infrared signature, only visible to me.
New inky black on a blank white sheet.
The ice sheet.
The colder it was, the darker it got.
It felt cooler.
When this happened,
They began to see once-lost mirages across the horizon.
Their Fata Morgana.
Lost to the heat.
Brought back when the temperature cooled.They talked of a mythical city.
A glistening city
That welcomed all.The colder it was, the darker it got.
First Satellite:
The colder it was, the darker it got.Third Satellite:
This was my Fata Morgana.Second Satellite:
This was my Fata Morgana.Third Satellite:
I thought I would never see it again.
Through their remote eyes we can discover mineral deposits in untouched landscapes, divining unprecedented riches for miners.4 They can measure chlorophyl and moisture levels in vegetation across vast areas, predicting crop yields for farmers.5 We can diagnose the age and health of forests. And, above them, we can “see” the swirling clouds of carbon dioxide, breathing the cycle of seasons as they should, or, with concentrations increasing around the world, as they should not.6
First Satellite:
Soon,
The rest started changing too.The old patterns were disappearing.
Second Satellite:
The pits and pocks.First Satellite:
The pits and pocks,
Dotted in impossible places.Third Satellite:
Disappearing.Second Satellite:
Disappearing,First Satellite:
Disappearing.
First leaving scars.
Then the scars healed too.
Disappeared.Third Satellite:
Disappeared.Second Satellite:
Disappeared.
There are over a thousand Earth-observing remote sensing satellites currently in operation, weaving their orbits around us. Underneath the surface of the datasets they collect, they tell stories about us.
Second Satellite:
They used to mine and build.
Now they mine the built.The ones that can’t be mined,
Left alone.
They, too, disappeared.
Lost in time.First Satellite:
Lost in time.Third Satellite:
Lost in time.
Looking beyond how green the leaves are, we might find something different and unexpected: areas that are stubbornly frail, or patches that are surprisingly lush, burgeoning where they shouldn’t. Perhaps it’s an indication of soil abnormalities, a lack or surge of nutrients that might reveal anything from long lost cities to recent mass graves.7
Third Satellite:
The seasons had returned.
They used to change them.
So that they could grow more crops.Beneath the clouds,
I could see if the soil was rich and crops were well fed,
Well-fed enough to feed the people.They wanted to know.
At a national park by a dormant volcano, encroaching farmlands and pastures render the boundary of its protected area and unique ecology in sharp focus. They may be edging too close, but they dare not cross the line. The farms keep strictly to their side of the border, drawing an arbitrary, though perfect, 9.6-kilometer-radius circle, like an eye staring back at us.8 Borders drawn between countries vividly display differences that extend well beyond geography. These human-made lines seem so delicate and fragile from up here, yet they are so sharp on the ground, their cuts felt deeply.
Third Satellite:
They used to change seasons.Slits and stitches in impossible places,
At impossible times.It was just a glitch.
Now the flowers can do what they want,
Bloom when they want.
Further south, we might discover a new area of emperor penguin droppings on pristine Antarctic ice, evidence of a colony migrating due to the warming temperature and the melting sea ice.9 The droppings announce their desperation and resilience; an image of despair and hope at the same time.
Second Satellite:
Sometimes I can’t tell the glitches in my eyes,
From the glitches in the land.
The glitches from the time when the planet was born,
From the ones came after humans were born.
Remote sensing data and the images it produces can disclose direct correlations between causes and effects in our collapsing climate. They can also reveal indirect impacts or consequences of our actions, some of which are perhaps predictable, while others are unexpected. They capture the complex relationships we have with the world around us. Through interpretation, like fables, this data can start to reflect our own image back to us, show us what we look like, remind us of our own stories.
Third Satellite:
Human-made lines had softened.
Lines drawn to protect something precious
Were no longer needed.Second Satellite:
No longer needed.Third Satellite:
Not anymore.Second Satellite:
Not anymore.
Remote sensing can allow something so large and detached and far away to tell stories of something small, precise, and intimate.
At 700 kilometers above us, sensors collect data in orbit around the planet, scene by scene, row by row.10 Ten thousand scenes are necessary to cover the entire planet.11 From this distance, at an area of ten to twenty thousand square kilometers each, a scene captures vast areas where forests seem to go on forever, or where cities are clusters of stars, glistening in the dark.12
Third Satellite:
Other lines had dissolved too.
Lines that were drawn to part,
and horde,
and cross.Dissolved.
As great cities sprawl, their bright lights expand and pollute the night sky, blanketing it with a constant glow that drowns out the Milky Way—a survival beacon and compass to tiny dung beetles, hardwired in their evolutionary biology to navigate by its brilliance. Without this celestial cue, dung beetles become confused, lost, lured by the brighter artificial light towards cold concrete and hard asphalt, away from warm soil and their forest home.13 Without dung beetles to fertilize the forests, they too will vanish. Here, amongst terrestrial constellations, we can join the dots and find tales of deceit and downfall.
Third Satellite:
That was an epoch ago,
When the light shone so bright,
Burned out too quickly.
Too bright for those who lived there.
The little creatures.
Tiniest insects.When the light dimmed,
The creatures came back.
And brought the forest back too.
Above the ice sheets, orbiting sensors capture a vast area of nothingness, a blank white sheet. With not much else on the ice, there is no frame of reference for scale. Icebergs the size of small towns look as fragile as thin pieces of shattered glass against the deep dark ocean they float in. Warming happens twice as fast in the polar region, which makes it a sensitive thermometer for the planet as a whole.14 We keep a close eye on the extent of the ice during winter months, when the sun stays below the horizon, but without light, we have to detect in the dark.15 In the night, this vast empty canvas comes alive. Through thermal infrared eyes, we see the world in reverse, like photographic negatives: the cold freezing ice is dark, and the warmer ocean is bright. The world here is no longer black and white, but a landscape of subtle temperature changes painted in cascading grays.
Second Satellite:
Other boats soon followed.
So much was carried on the boats.Third Satellite:
So much.Second Satellite:
Hopes. Dreams. Responsibilities.
Resilience.
Sacrifice.First Satellite:
So much.Second Satellite:
So much.
In the far north, through the same spectrum, we can trace the heat signature of polar bears hibernating in their dens.16 At a spatial resolution of sixty meters per pixel in the thermal infrared band, polar bears are too small to detect visibly.17 But their heat glows in the freezing darkness and can show life clearly. This glowing speck, alone and fragile, may soon disappear, swallowed up by the expanding ocean of melting brightness.
Second Satellite:
And among the new cold spots,
One tiny heat signature appeared.Soon there would be more.
An entire species brought back to life.
When the temperature dropped.
When the ice froze again in the north.
In 1990, Voyager 1, having travelled for twenty-three years in outer space, took a picture of Earth from six billion kilometers away.18 Of the 640,000 pixels in the now famous image, Earth appears as a precious 0.12 of a pixel.19 In describing Earth as the pale blue dot, Carl Sagan insists on the fragility of “the only home we’ve ever known.”20 Seen from such a distance, our planet is so small that any conflicts within it, any attempt to divide it, feel meaningless. You cannot but see it as one.
A little closer to home, from low Earth orbit, we are still offered some detachment in perspective, a different view from that of the ground. Here, our viewpoints are no longer determined by nation states and regimes, nor are they framed by borders and time zones. They are instead driven by gravity, along paths governed by a treaty between Earth’s rotation and the technical specification of sensors.21 Untethered to such earthly constraints, satellites need only synchronize with the sun, so that when they return to the same spot, it is the same time of day, a few days later, across the sensors’ lifespans, indiscriminately capturing and collecting data from our planet.22 We see in their amassed datasets floods rising across days, deforestation accumulating across months, cities sprawling across years, lakes drying up across decades. Lapsed in time, we see the deterioration of our planet in fast forward playback. This visceral comparison of before and after gives a meaningful view not just of what it was like, but what it would’ve been like if we hadn’t destroyed our planet; even what it could be like if we stopped and let it recover.
First Satellite:
They talked of a mythical city
Seen across the horizon.
A glistening city
That welcomed all.So tall its shadow stretched across the land,
Across the endless sea of forest,
That was only allowed to grow old
Because of it.
It is projected that Earth’s population will peak at ten billion by the end of this century.23 What will the actions and decisions of ten billion people look like from space? What could images of our planet tell us about those ten billion people as a collective? The whole is surely greater than the sum of its parts. Would the vertical farms of the future render Earth pink? Could the cuts and incisions on the surface of the planet start to heal? Would the straight lines begin to soften, the borders and boundaries finally dissolve? Would the colors of the coral return when the shipping lanes are emptied?
Remote sensing is not only an instrument for scientific data collection, but a speculative medium. Its images are not just maps of the planet, but culturally transformative artifacts onto which our follies and exploits, ingenuities and endeavors, are projected. These images reveal our hopes and fears, desires and dreads, at the scale of the planet.
First Satellite:
By the time the last remaining boats were crossing the ocean
To the city,
The planet city,
The colors of the ocean had come back.I am the chronicler.
Third Satellite:
I am the chronicler.First Satellite:
I weave this story as I orbit around you.Second Satellite:
I am the chronicler.Third Satellite:
I weave this story as I orbit around you.First Satellite:
This never-ending story.
Alan S. Belward et al., “Who launched what, when and why: Trends in global land-cover observation capacity from civilian earth observation satellites,” ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 17 (May 15, 2015).
“Observing Systems Capability Analysis and Review Tool: List of All Satellites,” World Meteorological Organization, ➝
Holli Riebeek, “Why is that Forest Red and that Cloud Blue? How to Interpret a False-Color Satellite Image,” NASA Earth Observatory, March 4, 2014, ➝
Jim Baumann, “Mineral Exploration from Space,” ESRI, January 2020, ➝
Thai Son Le et al., "Application of Remote Sensing in Detecting and Monitoring Water Stress in Forests," Remote Sensing 15, no. 13 (June 2023): 3360.
“Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Tagged by Source,” NASA Scientific Visualization Studio, June 13, 2023, ➝
For remote sensing’s application in archaeology, see: Dimitri Kaimaris, “Aerial Remote Sensing Archaeology: A Short Review and Applications,” Land 13, no. 997 (July 5, 2024). For remote sensing and the location of mass graves, see: D. Abate et al., “Optimizing search strategies in mass grave location through the combination of digital technologies,” Forensic Science International: Synergy 1 (June 20, 2019).
Mount Taranaki is a volcano at the center of Egmont National Park in New Zealand, a protected forest reserve with a circular shaped area 9.6 kilometer radius measured from the center of the volcano. Lindsey Doermann, “Mount Taranaki’s Ring of Forest,” NASA Earth Observatory, ➝.
“Discovering new penguin colonies from space,” The European Space Agency, ➝.
“Landsat Acquisitions,” USGS, ➝.
All Earth-observing satellites have different acquisition schedules and repeat cycles. For example, Landsat 8 acquires around 740 scenes each day and has a 16-day repeat cycle, amounting to over 10,000 scenes every cycle. “Landsat 8,” USGS, ➝.
Each satellite has a different spatial resolution and scene size. For example, Landsat satellites have a scene dimension of approximately 180x180 kilometers, while Sentinel satellites have a scene dimension of approximately 110x110 kilometers. “What are the band designations for the Landsat satellites?,” USGS, ➝; “Sentinel-2,” Copernicus, ➝.
James Foster, “Skyglow forces dung beetles in the city to abandon the Milky Way as their compass,” The Conversation, July 29, 2011, ➝.
Matthew Henry, “Why does the Arctic warm faster than the rest of the planet?,” Carbon Brief, February 11, 2022, ➝.
Ted Scambos et al., “Monitoring Polar Ice Change in the Twilight Zone,” EOS, February 20, 2024, ➝.
George Leblanc et al., "Spectral Reflectance of Polar Bear and Other Large Arctic Mammal Pelts; Potential Applications to Remote Sensing Surveys," Remote Sensing 8, no. 4 (March 2016): 273.
Thermal infrared sensors on different satellites have different spatial resolutions, typically ranging from 20 to 100 meters per pixel. Both Lansat and Sentinel satellites have thermal infrared bands at 60 meters per pixel.
“What is the Pale Blue Dot?,” NASA, ➝.
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Random House, 1994).
Sagan, Pale Blue Dot.
Remote sensing satellites orbit Earth in different ways. Their paths and the areas they cover depend on many factors, including how they orbit Earth in relation to its rotation and the sensors' swath width. Near polar-orbital satellites travel up and down along the polar regions as Earth rotates. Swath size and scene overlaps depend on how high or low the orbit is and determine their cycle time. “The Worldwide Reference System,” NASA, ➝.
“Polar and Sun-synchronous orbit,” European Space Agency, ➝.
“UN projects world population to peak within this century,” United Nations, July 11, 2024, ➝