Video: “Satellite selfie” from space shows the Great Barrier Reef

The pho­to was tak­en by the satel­lite from 550 kilo­me­ters above the reef.

A stun­ning video cap­tured by a satel­lite from space shows Aus­trali­a’s Great Bar­ri­er Reef in 4K res­o­lu­tion. The com­pa­ny that owns the satel­lite said it was cap­tured by a deploy­able 4K cam­era installed on a self­ie stick.

The MP42 microsatel­lite was fly­ing 550 kilo­me­ters above the reef off Aus­trali­a’s north­east coast when the video was shot, NanoAvion­ics said. The com­pa­ny also post­ed a high def­i­n­i­tion video on its YouTube channel.

In addi­tion to an immer­sive view of Earth, the video also cap­tured the moon, which NanoAvion­ics said pho­to­bombed the selfie.

The depic­tion of the Great Bar­ri­er Reef in the back­ground was part­ly sym­bol­ic. “We want­ed to high­light the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of our plan­et and the impor­tance of satel­lite Earth obser­va­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for mon­i­tor­ing envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate change,” the com­pa­ny said in a press release.

The pho­tos and clips were cap­tured with a GoPro Hero 7 mount­ed on a self­ie stick. Accord­ing to NanoAvion­ics, the satel­lite was launched in April this year aboard a SpaceX Fal­con 9.

The Great Bar­ri­er Reef is the largest coral reef sys­tem in the world, stretch­ing more than 2,300 kilo­me­ters (1,400 miles) along Aus­trali­a’s north­east coast.

In a report released in March this year, an Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment report said the Great Bar­ri­er Reef was suf­fer­ing from “mass bleach­ing” due to glob­al warming.

The report is based on exten­sive sur­veys of the World Her­itage-list­ed reef between Sep­tem­ber 2021 and March 2022, accord­ing to the Great Bar­ri­er Reef Marine Park Authority.

Of the 719 reefs sur­veyed, 654 — or 91 per­cent — showed some lev­el of coral bleach­ing, accord­ing to the report.

Although bleached corals are under stress, they can still recov­er when con­di­tions become more mod­er­ate, the reef author­i­ty said.