By Bethany Lee | 2025-08-07

NASA provided critical data this year amid natural disasters in Texas and California, saving lives and helping first responders.

This July, at least 138 people died as a result of severe flooding from a tropical storm in central Texas.

The disaster activated hundreds of response teams at the local, state and federal level, including the NASA Disasters Program, a project that provides scientific data to emergency responders during events ranging from the flooding in Texas to volcanic eruptions in Alaska.

Using specialized aerial and orbital equipment, the Disasters Program helps responders make decisions in emergencies, often ones that could mean the difference between life and death.

NASA possesses remarkable capabilities in terms of advanced aircraft and sensor technologies. Scientists originally developed these sensors for research but adapted them for emergency use. They often perform tasks that conventional tools cannot.

During the July flood in Texas, for example, satellites could not see the full extent of the flooding because of dense cloud cover and vegetation.

In response, NASA deployed two aircraft to survey impacted regions.

One had the DyNAMITE (Day/Night Airborne Motion Imager for Terrestrial Environments) sensor, which can collect high-resolution images from a high altitude and share the data with emergency responders in real time.

The other used UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar) technology to penetrate the clouds and debris and detect any water underneath.

Researchers at NASA use the data collected in the air to provide real-time maps and images to monitor the impact of natural disasters.

They do this through an online database, the NASA Disasters Mapping Portal, that collects geographic data after a significant event.

This data could include, for example, images of a tornado as it passes through the Midwest, a map of power losses due to extreme heat or infrared imagery of disturbance after a landslide.

Mapping disasters

The Disasters Program often calls on astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) to collect data in the wake of severe events.

The ISS has multiple sensors that are constantly monitoring the Earth's surface, and the station's astronauts themselves take pictures during a natural disaster and send them to researchers on the ground.

"The vantage point from space allows you to see a much larger area in a very holistic snapshot in time," Will Stefanov, one of the Johnson Space Center's response coordinators for the NASA Disasters Program, said in an episode of NASA's Houston We Have a Podcast published May 9.

"When you're on the ground, you're fairly limited to dealing with what's right around you. When you have the the broader view from orbital or airborne data, you can get ... a more regional sense of what's happening."

Astronauts on the ISS in January sent orbital images of damage caused by January's wildfires in Southern California to the teams on the ground. The images were accompanied by data from other NASA sources, including its AVIRIS-3 sensor, an airborne imaging spectrometer.

Local responders in California then used those data to assess the damage and attempt to slow the spread of hazardous debris, providing crucial, life-saving information to those on the front lines of natural disasters.

Although NASA does not have an emergency response team of its own, it does have a vast network and powerful data-processing systems capable of handling the data from aircraft and other sources.

Through the Disasters Response Coordination System (DRCS), NASA researchers work with response groups like the Federal Emergency Management Agency to quickly share data and help local responders to help with search-and-rescue, measure the severity of a disaster and pinpoint potential effects on critical infrastructure or lifelines -- particularly in hard-to-observe or remote regions.

"The whole purpose behind the DRCS is to increase coordination and increase communication and increase what NASA can do to help out for people responding to these events," Stefanov said.