Airdate: A Year from Space

Documentary special A Year from Space draws upon 2022 satellite images to illustrate the impact of Covid globally, re-opening the world, war in Ukraine and climate change.

Over 1000 satellites take millions of images of Earth every single day. They give us unique and often magical insights into the beauty and vulnerability of our planet and reveal hidden truths behind the big stories of 2022. Whether they are about the activities of mankind or the awesome power of the natural world these images allow us to understand our planet and ourselves in a whole new way.

The war in Ukraine was foretold through the analysis of satellite images and the terrible destruction since has been revealed by photographs taken far above the battlefields and bombed out cities. But in 2022 satellites have also revealed stories of joy and optimism. As Covid lockdowns were lifted, empty cities were busy again, crowds returned to St Peter’s Square in Rome and a million pilgrims gathered in Mecca for the Haj. Across the summer, festivals burst back into life, and each did so in ways that could best be understood from space – from the happy randomness of Glastonbury in the green fields of Somerset, to the surreal symmetry of Burning Man in the Arizona desert.

In places where man never goes, satellites revealed magical new stories like the existence of unknown colonies of king penguins in Antarctica or the plumes of herring spawn in the Pacific, so vast they can be seen from space and a testament to a species bouncing back. But elsewhere terrifying images of wildfires across Europe, receding rivers and browned out landscapes bore witness to the hottest year on record. Riots in Sri Lanka, the darkening of the lights of Tigray as civil war destroyed power supplies and ever more destruction in Ukraine could all be seen from space and tell the story of 2022, a tumultuous year for the natural world and humankind.

Saturday, 22 April at 8.30pm on SBS.