Satellite View of the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

The Mississippi River Delta is speckled with clouds and outlined by a wide border of greenish-tan sediment in this image of the Gulf Coast and near-shore waters was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite on April 21, 2010. The oil platform appears as a white dot, and a fan of brown smoke extends to the southeast.

On April 20, 2010, an explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and injured many others. The rig burned and sank resulting in an oil spill from damaged pipes 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico in the worst environmental disaster in United States history.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.

* Country: United States of America

Restrictions

IMAGE IS IN PUBLIC DOMAIN. NO SALES. CAN BE DISTRIBUTED FREELY SUBJECT TO NASA MEDIA USAGE GUIDELINES:
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Unique identifier: GP0264I

Type: Image

Shoot date: 21/04/2010

Locations: Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana, North America, United States of America

Credit line: © Jeff Schmaltz / NASA

Size: 3840px × 2880px 3MB

Ranking: ★★★★ (E)

Containers

Shoot:

Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Disaster

Views from NASA satellites and the International Space Station show the extent of oil spill from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil platform. The BP leased Transocean rig exploded April 20, 2010 killing 11 workers and leaking millions of barrels of oil in the worst environmental disaster in Unted States history.

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