On the morning of Jan. 8, 2025, a red dot popped up on NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System. It was the first sign of what would become one of California's worst wildfires in history, going on to claim a dozen lives and burn down thousands of homes in the Palisades. All the while, the Aqua satellite was orbiting above, scanning the planet and beaming data down to ground stations in Alaska and Svalbard.
This satellite carries infrared sensors that capture changes on Earth impossible to see with the human eye, making it vital for coordinating emergency responders during natural disasters. Upon detection, NASA converts Aqua's infrared wave data into GPS coordinates, allowing officials to plot the spread of fire as points on a map. These coordinates make up what's known as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), an instrument that spots fires on the Earth’s surface. This process often alerts emergency services faster than 911 calls from the ground.
But now, scientists are starting to find surprising gaps in that data. Logs maintained by NASA show multiple occasions where fire-tracking datasets reported errors. Why? Incoming space debris.