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NASA shares nighttime satellite images of traffic jam at Suez Canal

WION Web Team
Washington, United StatesUpdated: Apr 01, 2021, 02:48 PM IST
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Suez Canal traffic jam Photograph:(Twitter)

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The images were captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 and showed several ships waiting in the Gulf of Suez

Suez Canal was blocked for days as a giant vessel, Ever Given, blocked one of the busiest sea routes of the world.

Now, that the vessel has refloated, the US space agency NASA has shared nighttime images of the traffic jam.

The images were captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 and showed several ships waiting in the Gulf of Suez, the northwestern arm of the Red Sea.

These images were shared by NASA Earth's Twitter account. "Hundreds of ships were left idling around the Suez Canal as engineers worked to dislodge a grounded vessel blocking the key shipping route in Egypt," the tweet read.

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"The line of ships waiting to get through the #SuezCanal was also visible to a sensor on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite. The sensor can detect even faint nighttime light signals," another tweet showed the difference in traffic over a period of days.

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These images have been captured through the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite.

Experts believe that while the traffic began moving on March 29, it will still take some more time for the traffic to completely simmer down to normal. Earlier, on March 28, 367 ships were waiting, as per the canal service company Leth Agencies. It also added that 154 were waiting to the north near Port Said; 42 were in Great Bitter Lake; and 171 were south of stranded ship in the Red Sea