A Bay Area company is battling climate change from space with the help of Elon Musk and SpaceX.
A satellite from Palo Alto's Pixxel — being launched into space this Friday on a SpaceX rocket — will take and send back images to help find and track climate issues.
"We wanted to build a health monitor for the planet," Pixxel CEO Awais Ahmed said.
The satellite can both monitor a wide area of the Earth or drill down to a very specific piece of land.
"How do you actually measure the carbon that's being sequestered or stored somewhere? You need to see minor changes that occur in these plants or trees," Ahmed said.
Pixxel said it just landed $25 million in venture capital investment money — some of it from Bay Area venture capitalists — to continue to take the pulse of the planet. The company says it will use that money to build more satellites and improve its climate detection software.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.