2020 as seen from space: Satellite images reveal wildfires, oil spills, hurricanes, and catastrophic explosions

Morgan McFall-JohnsenDec 24, 2020, 22:25 IST

Five tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin on September 14, 2020.NOAA GOES-East

Satellites orbiting Earth photographed the most devastating and world-changing events of the year from above.
When wildfires engulfed Australia, protests erupted across the US, and a historic astronaut mission launched, satellites tracked it all.
The 21 satellite images below also reveal oil spills, explosions, and pandemic lockdowns.

Anybody can see that it's been a difficult and eventful year. That's even evident to the satellites orbiting our planet.

With each new disaster of 2020 - record-breaking fires, lockdowns of major cities, the shocking explosion of a warehouse in Beirut - spacecraft turned their cameras to the scene on Earth. Together, these shots from space offer a zoomed-out picture of the year's most shocking events.

It wasn't all doom and gloom, though. Satellites also captured a historic rocket launch and the aftermath of a successful (though explosive) rocket test.

Here are the 21 most striking satellite images of 2020.

2020 revealed what kind of year it was going to be right away. In January, eastern Australia went up in flames.

An animation shows the Himawari-8 satellite's view of the Australian brushfires and smoke clouds on January 2, 2020. RAMMB/CIRA/CSU

From space, it was easy to spot the bushfires and plumes of smoke they sent across the ocean.

The smoke circled the globe for three months.

A view of a brushfire in Bateman Bay, Australia, on December 31, 2019. Copernicus EMS; Sentinel 2/ESA

In the end, the blazes burned more than 46 million acres, according to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. That's an area roughly the size of Syria.

At the same time, another disaster was spreading in Wuhan, China. By February, the city was speed-building hospitals for COVID-19 patients.

Soon, countries across the globe were closing their borders and their airports.

In response, airlines canceled flights and their grounded planes filled airport runways.

As stay-at-home orders followed, the changes in human movement were visible from space.

The virus's death toll also left its mark on the Earth, as Iran and other countries dug graves en masse.

In March, Maxar satellites spotted new trenches at a cemetery in Qom, Iran, along with what appears to be a pile of lime, which is sometimes used in mass graves to prevent decay and manage odor.

The pandemic hasn't stopped SpaceX. In the spring, Elon Musk's rocket company launched its first astronauts aboard its Crew Dragon spaceship.

The mission flew NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station. They stayed there, with the Crew Dragon capsule docked to the station, for two months then plummeted safely back to Earth.

Can't see the rocket? Here it is up close.

It was the world's first crewed commercial spaceflight.

Back on the ground, the US erupted in protests following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police.

On May 25, Floyd died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes. The next day, protests began in Minneapolis. Within days, they had spread across the nation.

In June, North Korea blew up the liaison office that served as its informal embassy with South Korea.

An oil spill in the Russian Arctic turned the Ambarnaya River red.

On May 29, a Norilsk Nickel fuel tank in Siberia lost pressure and leaked 21,000 metric tons of diesel into nearby rivers and soil. The company said melting permafrost had weakened the storage tank's support. But federal investigators detained three power-station managers and charged the mayor of the city of Norilsk with criminal negligence, Reuters reported.

The following month, a bulk carrier ship called the MV Wakashio got stuck on coral reefs off the coast of Mauritius, began to sink, and spilled its oil into the ocean.

Barges managed to pump 3,000 tons of oil from the ship, but another 1,000 tons leaked into the ocean, endangering coral reefs and pristine azure lagoons.

An initial investigation found that crew members searching for better cell phone signals may have steered the ship two miles closer to shore than planned, according to the Associated Press.

The aircraft-carrier-sized ship split in two, and its front half soon drifted away into open waters.

Mauritius is a tourism hotspot, so the oil spill added insult to the injury of the coronavirus pandemic. Japan, which owns and operated the ship, offered to resolve the issue with a $300 million loan rather than a more thorough investigation, Forbes reported.

Barges managed to pump 3,000 tons of oil from the ship, but another 1,000 tons leaked into the ocean, endangering coral reefs and pristine azure lagoons.

An initial investigation found that crew members searching for better cell phone signals may have steered the ship two miles closer to shore than planned, according to the Associated Press.

The aircraft-carrier-sized ship split in two, and its front half soon drifted away into open waters.

On August 4, a huge warehouse exploded in Beirut, devastating the Lebanon capital.

A series of wildfires broke out across California, Oregon, and Washington in late summer. By September, the entire West Coast was shrouded in smoke.

Satellite imagery shows West Coast wildfires from about 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. PT, September 8, 2020. CIRA/NOAA GOES-West

The smoke turned skies orange and wafted across the country, tinting New York skies sepia and even reached the Netherlands.

Tens of thousands of people evacuated their homes. In California, 4 million acres burned — more than double the previous state record. Fires killed at least 31 people in California, nine in Oregon, and one in Washington.

The smoke turned skies orange and wafted across the country, tinting New York skies sepia and even reached the Netherlands.

Colorado, too, went up in smoke. Three of the four largest fires in the state's history burned in late summer.

Hurricane season brought more cyclones to the Atlantic basin than any prior year on record. Satellites tracked their progress.

Satellite imagery shows Hurricane Delta churning past the Yucatan Peninsula on the morning of October 7, 2020. NOAA GOES-East

More of these storms made landfall in the US than in any prior hurricane season. Hurricane Delta intensified faster than any other cyclone on record, whipping itself from a mere tropical storm to a Category 4 in just 24 hours.

Climate change is making hurricanes stronger, slower, and wetter.

Two hurricanes battered Lake Charles, Louisiana. By mid-October, entire neighborhoods had become seas of blue emergency tarps.

Hurricane Laura ripped up Lake Charles homes with 150 mph winds. Six weeks later, Hurricane Delta dumped more than 15 inches of rain on the town.

In November, violent conflict erupted in Ethiopia. The impacts were visible from space.

The Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which had previously ruled the country for 27 years, began fighting for control over parts of the country's Tigray region in November, Politico reported.

On December 1, the Arecibo radio telescope collapsed. Two recent cable failures had left it damaged beyond repair.

SpaceX had its own explosion in December, when a model of its Starship spaceship went on its most ambitious test flight yet, then crumpled upon landing.

Overall, the flight was a success, rocketing the spaceship tens of thousands of feet into the air. But it left only scorched remains on the landing pad.

A year of the pandemic, in 26 photos

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