A Year from Space (FTA Premiere SBS Saturday 22 April 2022)

A Year from Space gets a free to air premiere tonight on SBS

Every day, more than a thousand satellites take millions of pictures of Earth.

They show us the magic and fragility of our world in ways we’ve never seen before, shedding light on the year’s biggest stories.

These pictures give us a new perspective on our planet and on ourselves, whether they depict the work of human hands or the immense power of nature.

Satellite imagery analysis predicted the outbreak of war in the Ukraine, and subsequent aerial photography of the region’s battlefields and bombed-out cities has showed the catastrophic destruction that has resulted. Stories of happiness and hope have also been shared by satellites in 2022.

Following the end of the Covid lockdowns, once-deserted towns again bustled with life; tourists flocked to St. Peter’s Square in Rome, and one million Muslims converged on Mecca for the Haj.

From the joyous unpredictability of Glastonbury in the green fields of Somerset to the strange symmetry of Burning Man in the Arizona desert, festivals across the summer sprung back to life in ways best understood from space.

Unknown colonies of king penguins in Antarctica were discovered by satellites, and the plumes of herring spawn in the Pacific, so large they could be seen from space, are a resounding monument to the resilience of a species on the comeback. However, evidence of the hottest year on record could be seen elsewhere in the form of horrifying photographs of wildfires across Europe, shrinking rivers, and browning landscapes.

The tumultuous year 2022, as viewed from space, included riots in Sri Lanka, the darkening of the lights in Tigray as civil war damaged power sources, and ever more destruction in Ukraine.

A Year From Space FTA Premiere Saturday 22 April 2023 at 8.30pm on SBS.