NASA uses 200 satellites to detect forest fires in 2018

The US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced a project called FireSat that will give the earliest warnings when a wildfire is occurring, in the face of a catastrophic disaster worldwide.

NASA uses satellites to detect forest fires

Normally, fire will originate from natural elements and spread quickly in rural areas, where very few people live to promptly detect the fire. Because of this delay, fire broke out so badly that it was out of control.

Now, NASA has a plan to recognize the emergence of fire from space without supervision. As mentioned above, FireSat is essentially a network of 200 satellites equipped with heat sensors, which surround the entire globe.

These sensors are capable of detecting fire when they spread at a radius of about 11 - 15 meters within 15 minutes of starting to flare up. Thanks to this network, NASA hopes they can track forest fires, explosions or oil spills.

In addition, the FireSat system can send images of the fire once a minute, to provide the most accurate information about what is happening in the fire area (currently, the satellite captures a fire 2. times in a day). If everything goes according to plan, FireSat will be put into operation from June 2018.