A joint U.S.-India Earth-observation satellite has produced a striking time-lapse showing lava spreading from Krasheninnikov volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula after the volcano erupted for the first time in nearly five centuries.
NASA said the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck offshore near Kamchatka on July 30, 2025, apparently jolted one of the volcanoes awake. A few days later, Krasheninnikov began erupting after having been quiet since about 1550.
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission, known as NISAR, began repeatedly observing the volcano from orbit. Researchers assembled 17 radar observations captured through mid-August 2026 into a time-lapse sequence. The imagery shows lava filling a smaller inner caldera, overflowing into a wider crater and then spreading outward in a fan.
NISAR orbits about 464 miles (747 kilometers) above Earth and revisits the area twice every 12 days from different orbital directions. NASA says the observations demonstrate how repeated high-resolution radar measurements can help scientists monitor natural hazards, including volcanoes in remote regions that are difficult to observe continuously from the ground.
The visualization is based on observed radar data rather than conventional camera footage. Brighter areas in the sequence represent lava reflecting the radar signal differently from the surrounding surface.
Why it matters
The sequence offers an unusual visual record of a long-dormant volcano changing over time while also demonstrating the capabilities of the NASA-ISRO satellite mission. NISAR carries both L-band and S-band radar instruments designed to collect detailed measurements of Earth’s changing surface.
Source: NASA and NASA Scientific Visualization Studio.
Video credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. Zark News branding has been overlaid on the web presentation; the underlying visualization is NASA material.