The world of science has brought whales and outer space together for the first time since the fourth Star Trek movie.
The British Antarctic Survey has been partnering with researchers in Chile on a way to protect whales via satellite!
We take a lot of images from space, after all, and while many human beachgoers report seeing whales in distress on the coast, there are plenty of other times that the whales get stranded on land in more remote places where humans aren’t likely to find them.
The researchers think satellite images could help spot those whales.
Satellite pictures may be taken from high above earth but they’re high resolution enough that observers could spot beached whales sooner than land-based survey crews.
The hope is that, over time, they might be able to spot the whales soon enough to get them back into the water, alive and healthy.
And if that doesn’t work we can have the crew of the Enterprise travel back to 1986 and bring some whales to the future.
Either way is fine.
And here’s another story of something in the sky that does something cool on land.
A paraglider who somehow manages to land so smoothly and so carefully that they end up not on the ground, but sitting on a couch. That’s out on a mountainside for whatever reason.
Stranded whales detected from space (British Antarctic Survey)
Parachute Landing On Couch (YouTube)
