2023 Author: Bryan Walter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 22:24
San Francisco radar map. Green indicates stable areas, while yellow and red dots indicate changes in position with objects over time.
The European Space Agency has released data that confirm that the Millennium Tower in San Francisco is slowly sinking underground. The data was obtained by satellites Sentinel-1, according to the ESA website.
The Millennium Tower is the tallest residential building in San Francisco, the height of the 58-story skyscraper is 196.6 meters. One of the known building problems is the gradual sinking into the ground and deviation from the vertical axis. During its operation, the building went into the ground by 40 centimeters and deviated from the vertical axis by 15 centimeters. While the exact cause of the sinking is not known, the San Francisco attorney believes that the main problem lies in the irregularities in the construction of the foundation.
Researchers from ESA analyzed the radar data of the paired Sentinel-1 satellites from February 2015 to September 2016 and found that the skyscraper actually goes underground at a rate of four centimeters per year "in the line of sight" of the satellites, which is five centimeters per year. vertical without taking into account the deviation of the building from the vertical axis.
Millennium Tower and surrounding buildings. Green dots indicate static objects, blue dots indicate objects that have become closer to the radar during the observation period, and red dots indicate objects that have become more distant.
In addition, ESA has checked other areas in the San Francisco Bay Area for "mobility" and has also checked facilities in other countries. In particular, it turned out that some station structures at the Oslo train station are sinking into the ground at a speed of 12 to 18 millimeters per year.
Oslo station radar map. Yellow and red dots indicate objects sinking underground.
Sentinel-1 satellites create highly accurate radar maps of the Earth. For example, with their help, data were previously obtained on soil displacement as a result of earthquakes in Nepal, and the Sentinel-1A satellite also made it possible to estimate the power of nuclear charges tested by North Korea in early 2016. This summer, the Sentinel-1A satellite had a minor accident - it collided with a millimeter-sized particle, which damaged an area 40 centimeters in diameter and slightly changed the orientation of the device in space, but this did not affect the overall performance of the device.
Sentinel is part of the European Copernicus Global Earth Monitoring Program. The Sentinel series will include seven missions, each of which consists of two or more vehicles. Currently, three missions are in orbit: Sentinel-1, responsible for radar imaging, Sentinel-2, which conducts optical imaging of the Earth's surface and studies of vegetation, and Sentinel-3, which monitors the state of the world's oceans. Previously, the Galleries of images obtained by Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-3A were published on N + 1.
