NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are granting free access to their satellite networks, empowering companies to leverage this technology in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
With nearly half the world's population under lockdown and many projects paused, NASA and ESA are repurposing their satellite assets for innovative COVID-19 solutions. On April 2, 2020, ESA issued a call for proposals targeting European firms, offering satellite access alongside €2.5 million in funding. Applications will be reviewed from late April through May.
“The European Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite mission provides key information on changes in the concentrations of atmospheric pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. However, there remains enormous potential for using Earth observation data to shed new light on other ongoing societal and economic changes,” the ESA press release states.
Similarly, NASA is mobilizing its satellites for addressing the pandemic's environmental, economic, and societal impacts—from monitoring environmental changes to evaluating local policy effects.
Internally, NASA staff are innovating personal protective equipment (PPE), telemedicine tools, disease spread models, and even offering supercomputing resources to vaccine and treatment researchers.
Notably, NASA halted SLS rocket assembly weeks earlier and elevated threat levels to 4 at key sites due to COVID-19 cases, delaying missions. This outbreak is also shifting Artemis program timelines, aiming for a U.S. lunar return in 2024.
