Skip to main content

NASA Offers Brazil Satellite Imaging To Help Stop Amazon Deforestation

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson visited Brazilian space research center INPE on Wednesday and proposed extending satellite partnerships with the United States to help monitor and prevent destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Nelson said NASA will have a satellite in January that can even render images of what is happening below the forest canopy. The satellite, called NISAR, will be launched with India.

"It is going to be able to look through the canopy of the jungle so that we can see if someone has burned the undergrowth and that would ultimately kill the big trees," he said at a news conference at INPE in Sao Jose dos Campos.

Science Minister Luciana Santos showed Nelson around INPE headquarters and explained Brazil's space program. The agency has launched a series of satellites in partnership with China since 1999 for agricultural and environmental monitoring.

Brazil relies on satellite imagery to watch over the Amazon, but cloud cover is often a hurdle for precise and timely images.

Nelson, a former U.S. senator, met on Monday with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brasilia.

"I thanked the president for his continuous effort to save the Amazon rainforest," he told reporters after the meeting.

Nelson said when he flew in space 37 years ago he could see with the naked eye the destruction of the rainforest by the different colors visible from his spacecraft window.

Satellites that NASA plans to place in orbit early next year will add "extreme ability to understand what is happening" to the rainforest, he said in Brasilia.

Earlier on Tuesday, Nelson visited Brazilian plane maker Embraer in Sao Jose dos Campos and toured the production line for its narrow-body commercial E-Jets.

Nelson will continue his South American trip this week with visits to Argentina and Colombia.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)



from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/EhpX19M

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's Official, Kamala Harris Is Democratic Candidate For US Election

US Vice President Kamala Harris effectively secured the Democratic party's presidential nomination Friday, confirming her remarkable rise to party standard bearer in November's showdown against Republican Donald Trump. Kamala Harris was the sole candidate on the ballot for a five-day electronic vote of nearly 4,000 party convention delegates. She will be officially crowned at a Chicago convention later this month. "I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States," Kamala Harris, 59, said on a phone-in to a party celebration after securing enough votes by the second day of the marathon vote. In the two weeks since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Kamala Harris has gained full control of the party. No other Democrats stepped forward to challenge her elevation to the top of the ticket, making her confirmation as the first Black and South Asian woman ever to secure a major party's nomination a formality. The a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Muhammad Now The Most Popular Name For A Baby In Great Britain, Data Shows

427 years after William Shakespeare wrote it for the first time in the great "tragedy" Romeo & Juliet, England is asking the quintessential question - "What's in a name?" - And this time wondering what significance that question might hold in another 42.7 years. The Department of Statistics in the United Kingdom has revealed in its latest dataset that Muhammad is officially the most popular name for a newborn boy in England and Wales. More than 4,600 babies were registered with that name in 2023 - the highest for a boy. Muhammad was the second-most popular name in 2022 as well. Noah, once the most popular name in UK, came a distant second this year, according to the Office for National Statistics or ONS. But the staff at Great Britain's statistical office has in-fact been observing the trend for a while now. Jotting down the most popular names in the UK, besides other important statistics, it revealed that Muhammad has been among the top 10 names for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pak's ISI Fuelling Unrest In Bangladesh, Claims Sheikh Hasina's Son

Sheikh Hasina, who quit as prime minister and fled Bangladesh, will be back in the country as soon as democracy is restored, his son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said on Thursday and blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, for fuelling the ongoing unrest in the country. In an interview with PTI, Mr Joy said that although 76-year-old Sheikh Hasina would return to Bangladesh, it has not yet been decided whether she will be back as a "retired or active" politician. He also asserted that the members of the Sheikh Mujib (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) family will neither abandon its people nor leave the beleaguered Awami League in the lurch. He expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government for protecting his mother and appealed to India to help build international opinion and exert pressure to restore democracy in Bangladesh. "Yes, it is true that I had said she wouldn't return to Bangladesh. But a lot has changed in the last two days following continuous...
Post a Comment
Read more