NASA Satellites Spot Rare Underwater Volcano Eruption That Could Create Earth’s Newest Island
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A submarine eruption north of Papua New Guinea may be building new land while satellites track its evolution from above.
Oceanographers often point out that the surfaces of the Moon and Mars are mapped more precisely than much of the deep seafloor on Earth. That gap is especially clear in the Bismarck Sea, a deep basin north of Papua New Guinea. Its seafloor is geologically complex, with faults, volcanic structures, rifts, scarps, active subduction zones, and spreading zones lying at depths that are difficult to map in fine detail with sonar.
On May 8, 2026, satellites picked up signs of an unexpected underwater volcanic eruption in the Central Bismarck Sea. For volcanologists, the event highlighted a major problem: there were no detailed maps of the region, and the deep water setting of the eruption remains poorly understood. The eruption is believed to be taking place along Titan Ridge, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) southeast of a submarine eruption recorded in 1972.
Still, scientists do not yet agree on exactly which volcanic feature is active, how deep the vent was before the eruption, or when it last erupted. “The good news is that there are huge opportunities to explore and learn using both government and commercial satellite platforms already in orbit,” said Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The clearest early evidence began with a small cluster of earthquakes detected by seismometers on May 8.
Soon afterward, satellite observations showed unmistakable signs of a submarine eruption. Starting May 9, NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites recorded optical images of white, steam-rich volcanic plumes rising into the atmosphere. NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem) satellite also detected discolored, disturbed water around the eruption site with its ocean color sensor.
Additional satellites saw ash plumes rising several kilometers into the air. More detailed imagery from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 2 and NASA/USGS Landsat 9 (top), collected on May 10 and 11, respectively, showed activity close to the ocean surface. The image at the top right shows the same area in false color (bands 7-6-5), with the inset revealing the eruption’s infrared signal.
On May 12, the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on Suomi NPP detected heat anomalies spread across roughly seven square kilometers. “There must be a lot of hot material near the surface to generate so many thermal anomalies,” said Simon Carn, a volcanologist at Michigan Tech. “This suggests a fairly shallow eruption vent—much shallower than what’s implied by the existing bathymetry, which shows water depths of several hundred meters or more.” Optical satellite images show vigorous activity in shallow water, including large areas of discolored water and many steam and ash vents spread across the surface.
Medium and high resolution sensors from government programs and commercial satellite companies have also captured broad pumice rafts (floating volcanic rocks) forming long streaks in surface currents in recent days.
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