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US–Indian space mission maps extreme subsidence in Mexico City
- anigbrowl 5mo agoI get that the article is primarily about the satellite capabilities, but it's rather annoying it doesn't mention what the future impact of the subsidence might be.
- greggsy 5mo agoI think that it’s quite responsible not to speculate on something they’re not an expert on. It’s exactly the sort of news bite that catastrophists glom onto. This is responsible journalism.
- anigbrowl 5mo agoThey could just call a geologist and ask, or cite some published works on the topic. It's not responsible, it's lazy.
- icegreentea2 5mo agoThis is a phys.org "article". They're usually just rehashed press releases, and this one is particularly bad - it's literally just the NASA press release with the last 2 paragraphs chopped off. https://www.nasa.gov/missions/nisar/us-indian-space-mission-maps-extreme-subsidence-in-mexico-city/ https://www.nasa.gov/missions/nisar/us-indian-space-mission-...
- PunchyHamster 5mo ago> I think that it’s quite responsible not to speculate on something they’re not an expert on. "Recent satellite maps show Mexico City getting closer to hell at alarming rate"
- barney54 5mo agoNor does it say how much subsidence the satellite documented.
- barbazoo 5mo agoThere's this under the picture. > New data from NISAR shows where Mexico City and its environs subsided by up to a few centimeters per month (shown in blue) between Oct. 25, 2025, and Jan. 17, 2026
- dhosek 5mo agoThe labels on the map were also confusing, and at first because of the relative positioning of the texts identifying the airport and the angel I thought up was East and not North, although a closer inspection made things clearer (and yes, up is North).
- AntiUSAbah 5mo agoIt breaks water lines which increases the water problem even faster. On one side because its expensive to fix and on the other side because small leaks lead to massive water losses you don't find fast or easy.
- gurjeet 5mo agoFor the uninitiated, ISRO -> Indian Space Research Organization
- fleroviumna 5mo ago[dead]
- hn_throwaway_99 5mo agoSo, perhaps a dumb question, but the article mentions that 14 steps have been added to the base of the Angel of Independence monument, and the Wikipedia article mentions the same things: > Originally, nine steps led to the base, but due to the sinking of the ground, an ongoing problem in Mexico City, fourteen more steps have been added. So why didn't the monument itself also sink? Does it have piles going down to bedrock or something?
- wartywhoa23 5mo agoAngels don't sink, they rise! :)
- AntiUSAbah 5mo agoDepending of what stories you want to reference with this: Lucifer, Belial, Beelzebub all did not 'rise'.
- wartywhoa23 5mo agoSurely The Angel Of Independence must ascend, no? :)
- sundarurfriend 5mo agoI don't know the actual Christian theology, but at least in modern popular interpretations, Lucifer is the Angel of Independence, so that would suggest no!
- doodlebugging 5mo agoProbably depends on your frame of reference. Since we don't know where they started or where they are today it seems plausible that, relative to our own positions they may indeed have appeared to rise even though the text references state that they descended. We have no idea whether we might go up to heaven and down to hell or just across to them. We do know that everything in our universe is in motion and has been for a long time so it could be true that today we have to rise to get to both places if in fact either of them exist at all.
- pcrh 5mo agoThe amount of subsidence is quite dramatic, up to 25 cm per year! What are the practical consequences of this today, and what is being done to remedy this?
- nadermx 5mo agoThey are clearly not doing enough to remedy this; The only real solucion is to stop pumping the ground water, like I believe Japan did.
- Schiendelman 5mo agoMiami has a similar issue, doesn't it?
- manquer 5mo agoso does Jakarta and few other cities in the world.
- firesteelrain 5mo agoDue to construction not ground water problem. Mostly building load and construction induced.
- alephnerd 5mo ago> What are the practical consequences of this today Infrastructure degradation. Think overpass collapses or metro rail lines being misaligned. > what is being done to remedy this Not enough. CDMX faces the issue of multiple political entities with varying power making management difficult. A lot of the subsidence happens in informal settlements [0] due to a mixture of political populism (no one would dare demolish an informal settlement and piss off voters). Beijing used to have a similar issue, but a mixture of hukou, mass evictions, and mass demolitions helped alleviate the issue. [0] - https://penniur.upenn.edu/uploads/media/02_Gutierrez.pdf https://penniur.upenn.edu/uploads/media/02_Gutierrez.pdf
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- ani_k47 5mo agoI really can't believe that an issue discovered in 1925 still isn't solved. A kind of issue which wont take a Nobel prize to be solved. This is sad.
- chrisco255 5mo agoWhat solution? The earth is constantly moving and churning. The article states the city is built on an aquifer.
- trillic 5mo agoMexico City was built on top of a lake that was dried to facilitate the expansion of the city.
- 1270018080 5mo ago> What solution The nobel prize winner hopefully figures that out
- BurningFrog 5mo agoMany, many problems have good practical solutions that are politically impossible to implement.
- energy123 5mo agoAll due to some kind of game-theoretic "dilemma", like a coordination problem, collective action problem, prisoner's dilemma, principal-agent problem, tragedy of the commons.
- pen1slicker 5mo ago[dead]
- bobthepanda 5mo agoMexico City’s water stress is complicated by the fact that it sits 2240 meters above sea level on a giant plateau surrounded by mountains, so the normal solution of pumping water from somewhere else is a lot more expensive.
- zx8080 5mo agoCloudflare: verification rejected. Accessing from Japan. Thank you very much, Cloudlare.
- yumraj 5mo agojust reload. I got the same message, accessing from US, goes away on refresh.
- hactually 5mo agosame in Australia
- faangguyindia 5mo agosame in india
- prplxd_nihilist 5mo agoFrom India, verification passed through
- notLayz99 5mo agoFrom India as well. Verification passed
- SingAlong 5mo agoSame in Vietnam. Just refresh the page. It’ll get you through.
- doctaj 5mo agoSame in United States. Sigh.
- adrr 5mo agoRejected in the US with a google fiber IP.
- petcat 5mo ago[flagged]
- radicaldreamer 5mo agoHave you visited Mexico City? Your view of Mexico is likely colored by media (particularly social media) and the on-the-ground reality can be quite different. While it’s not the best run place, it is perfectly capable of large scale infra projects and state capacity and capability is pretty well developed.
- petcat 5mo ago[flagged]
- Crispness6482 5mo ago[dead]
- jeromegv 5mo agoMajority of migrants are actually not “from” Mexico. It’s just a bad argument.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- manquer 5mo agoCouldn't you say that about pretty much any government and people?
- CPLX 5mo agoThe wealthy parts of Mexican cities are substantially more well-managed and upscale than the poor parts of American cities. Of course, on average Mexico is poorer, has a lower GDP per capita, and so on. But the level of ignorance among Americans is astonishing sometimes.
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- gnabgib 5mo agoUh, you know, from the original source - Nasa (2 points, 2 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47970672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47970672 Real shame this re-report made the SCP
- mturmon 5mo agoLike the article hints at, some of the particular strengths of this new measurement: - frequent revisit, so can track even sub-monthly changes - the L-band radar is at a wavelength (24cm) that penetrates vegetation canopy, removing a confounder from the measurement - excellent spatial resolution that is relevant to urban scenes The data volume is exceptionally high and required a lot of engineering effort. All radars are demanding, but this one was a new high-water mark. (https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/now-that-nisar-launched-heres-what-you-can-expect-from-the-data https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/now-that-nisar-launched-...)
- disillusioned 5mo ago> but this one was a new high-water mark. Pun fully intended, I'm sure.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoIn parts of Central Valley CA, there's been over 30 ft / 9m of subsidence from ground water extraction over several decades. (30 cm/y) Lone pipes and drains that previously sat at ground level tower over the land.
- doodlebugging 5mo agoI wouldn't trust that graphic at the top of the article to be very accurate. It has an obvious acquisition footprint that was not resolved in processing. Those WNW-ESE stripes should've been resolved before publishing by ground-truthing the stripes using benchmarks established inside the mapped area so that the end result wouldn't suggest higher/lower subsidence along tracks than seen on parallel offset from tracks. That's just sloppy. The striping can have multiple sources so they need to study why there is an obvious footprint and then make the appropriate corrections.
- spacewhales 5mo agoThe way that this article is written reads like American propaganda. This is already being done, and has been done for a long time, including at the same or better temporal and spatial resolution. NISAR is genuinely cool, do I don't know why they felt the need to write this way. The new capabilities are mainly being able to do this in highly vegetated areas. In urban areas, like mexico city, this is literally 'intro to SAR' stuff.
- Aurornis 5mo agoDo you have any sources or even hints of sources that I could search for to back up the claim that this has been done for a long time?
- spacewhales 5mo agoFor example this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0034425720305344 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00344... Search for 'land subsidence insar mexico'
- lightedman 5mo ago"Do you have any sources or even hints of sources" I've been doing this as an amateur geologist for almost 2 decades using Google Earth and various data layers I can find on the internet.
- rramadass 5mo agoNISAR is a realization of InSAR and SweepSAR techniques but done with dual radar frequencies with higher-frequency monitoring and precision. Technical details from ISRO - https://www.isro.gov.in/Mission_GSLVF16_NISAR_Home.html https://www.isro.gov.in/Mission_GSLVF16_NISAR_Home.html
- KnuthIsGod 5mo ago"Objective: NISAR is the first of its kind mission, jointly developed by ISRO and NASA. It is an L and S-band, global, microwave imaging mission, with capability to acquire fully polarimetric and interferometric data. The unique dual-band Synthetic Aperture Radar of NISAR employs advanced, novel SweepSAR technique, which provides high resolution and large swath imagery. NISAR will image the global land and ice-covered surfaces, including islands, sea-ice and selected oceans every 12 days. NISAR mission’s primary objectives are to study land & ice deformation, land ecosystems, and oceanic regions in areas of common interest to the US and Indian science communities. NISAR mission will help to measure the woody biomass and its changes track changes in the extent of active crops understand the changes in wetlands’ extent map Greenland’s & Antarctica’s ice sheets, dynamics of sea ice and mountain glaciers characterize land surface deformation related to seismicity, volcanism, landslides, and subsidence & uplift associated with changes in subsurface aquifers, hydrocarbon reservoirs, etc. Spacecraft Configuration The Spacecraft is built around ISRO’s I-3K Structure. It carries two major Payloads viz., L & S- Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The S-band Radar system, data handling & high- speed downlink system, the spacecraft and the launch system are developed by ISRO. The L-band Radar system, high speed downlink system, the Solid-State Recorder, GPS receiver, the 9m Boom hoisting the 12m reflector are delivered by NASA. Further, ISRO takes care of the satellite commanding and operations, NASA will provide the orbit maneuver plan and RADAR operations plan. NISAR mission will be aided with ground station support of both ISRO and NASA for downloading of the acquired images, which after the necessary processing will be disseminated to the user community The data acquired through S-band and L-band SAR from a single platform will help the scientists to understand the changes happening to Planet Earth." https://www.isro.gov.in/Mission_GSLVF16_NISAR_Home.html https://www.isro.gov.in/Mission_GSLVF16_NISAR_Home.html
- rramadass 5mo agoNice; thanks for the link which lists the essential technical details. This is a great example of how two premier research organizations from different countries can cooperate together for everybody's benefit. ISRO on International Cooperation - https://www.isro.gov.in/InternationalCoOperation.html https://www.isro.gov.in/InternationalCoOperation.html
- justforfunhere 5mo agoExcessive groundwater extraction and urban development could be reasons for this. But these are common practice in almost all of the modern world, so why is this only showing up in Mexico City. There must be other contributing factors too.
- peanutz454 5mo agoMexico city was built on top a dried lake. It is really fascinating stuff, I would highly recommend to look it up. Ancient farming technology, floating islands, any nerd is gonna love it.
- notahacker 5mo agoYou can see evidence of subsidence in the rest of the developed world as well: SAR interferometry is sensitive enough to pick up the minimal amount of building movement from building Crossrail in London. It's just this article focuses on Mexico City, where it's dramatic
- prmoustache 5mo agoMexico City (Tenochtitlan) used to be a city build on a lake, partly on an island, partly on some kind of static rafts / floatting gardens (chinampas).
- bobthepanda 5mo agoIt’s not only Mexico City. This is happening in Jakarta, the Central Valley of California, Beijing, really anywhere with excessive groundwater extraction. It is just most people pay attention to CDMX because it is a very large 20M+ city with a lot of American and European tourists, and it is happening quickly to the point where you can see it with the naked eye.
- moralestapia 5mo agoFor those unfamiliar, why is this an issue? A lot of regions in the city rely on gravity to move water out of them. Floods have both increased in quantity and magnitude in recent years. If the city keeps sinking, more water will move in instead of out. Some areas of the city might become perma-flooded in a decade or two. This is a very serious situation with no obvious solution to it.