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Satellite GPS tracking data is helping to recover stolen automobiles and increase employee accountability. General Motors has installed a Stolen Vehicle Slowdown capability in 1.7 million of its new vehicles since the service’s creation in 2007.
Read MoreIn May 2010, a researcher at Purdue University used a combination of NASA satellite imagery and information from Google Earth to determine that North Korea was conducting illegal logging operations in a U.N.-protected forest.
Read MoreThe Open Initiative on the Use of Space Technologies to Support the World Heritage Convention is a program sponsored by ESA and the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Open Initiative focuses on the use of satellite imagery to identify and protect U.N.-designated world heritage sites and alert local authorities to changes that could pose a threat to those sites.
Read MoreSince 1995, NASA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) have operated the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program.
Read MoreIn June 2010, it was announced that data returned by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft had been used to discover a previously unknown cave on the Martian surface. This discovery was made not by NASA scientists, but by a group of 16 seventh-grade science students at a middle school in Cottonwood, California, through the joint NASA-Arizona State University Mars Student Imaging Program (MSIP).
Read MoreIn another example of space spinoff technology in the environmental and energy sector, German company ESCUBE produces sensors to monitor emissions from industrial heating systems. The company uses technology originally developed by ESA to measure oxygen levels near spacecraft reentering Earth’s atmosphere.
Read MoreSpace technology plays a role in monitoring and responding to environmental disasters unfolding in real time, such as the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. During the oil spill response, satellites were used daily both to track the geographic extent of the spill and to help forecast weather systems that might have affected the spread and the clean-up of the oil spill.
Read MoreSpace agencies increasingly are combining space-derived imagery and data with information from other sources, such as ground and aerial photography, to produce visually striking products that convey scientific information to the general public.
Read MoreTo ensure that developing nations have access to satellite information and services such as these fire-mapping satellite services, NASA and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have partnered on an initiative called SERVIR.
Read MoreThe same wide perspective that allows satellites to track the effects of an insect infestation helps forest managers and emergency response agencies to monitor and respond to forest and wildfires. In August 2010, the United Nations’ (U.N.) Food and Agriculture Organization, in partnership with the University of Maryland, launched the Global Fire Information Management System.
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