On 19th October, Pakistan launched its first Hyperspectral Satellite (HS-1) from a Chinese launch centre. Hyperspectral imaging, as a study published in the Journal of Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience explains, is a special kind of camera technology. Unlike normal satellite sensors that capture just a few colours like red, green, and blue, hyperspectral cameras split light into hundreds of narrow bands. This allows them to detect the smallest differences invisible to the human eye. According to the Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco), the HS-1 satellite allows Pakistan to study its land, water, and vegetation with great accuracy. It will help improve farming and monitor soil moisture, pollution, and deforestation, while also tracking glacial melt and planning cities better. The system will support early warning for floods and landslides and guide recovery after disasters. It can also assist Pakistan in mineral exploration. With this satellite, Pakistan begins to observe, understand, and manage its environment through its own eyes.
Pakistan is among the top ten countries affected by climate change, even though its share in greenhouse gas emissions is negligible. Almost every other year, it is hit by natural disasters during the monsoon season. This year, there was a 51 percent average increase in rainfall; as a result, there was flooding, landslides, and cloudbursts. Between June and October 2025, the National Disaster Management Authority reported that 1,037 people lost their lives and 1,067 were injured in the floods. Around 229,763 homes were destroyed, along with 2,811 kilometers of roads and 790 bridges. The official report, A Preliminary Assessment of Flood Damages in the Economy of Pakistan (2025), estimated total losses at Rs 822 billion, or about US $2.95 billion. According to economists, these floods could cut 0.3 to 0.7 percentage points from GDP growth in FY2026, lowering it to between 3.5 and 3.9 percent instead of the 4.2 percent target. For a country already under an IMF program, such damage only deepens the strain.
The HS-1 satellite can help by tracking soil saturation, vegetation loss, and water spread almost in real time. It can issue early warnings, map destruction more precisely, and support faster recovery. This reliable data can help save lives, reduce the suffering of people, and ensure a quicker path back to stability in disaster-affected areas. First, this satellite, HS-1, can provide near-real-time flood mapping that helps identify high-risk zones before rivers overflow in a more accurate and precise manner. Second, it can help measure soil moisture and rainfall accumulation, which helps planners predict landslides and crop stress.
Third, it monitors glacial melt and water flow in northern valleys, improving forecasts for downstream flooding. Fourthly, it offers post-disaster imagery to guide relief operations and rebuild climate-resilient infrastructure. Through this data, Pakistan can adopt a proactive approach instead of always remaining in firefighting mode. In recent years, NDMA has adopted a data-driven approach and has published a Disaster Risk Reduction Strategy for 2025–2030. The data obtained through this satellite can help further refine the strategy.
Apart from disaster management, Pakistan’s new satellite can also help monitor glacier retreat and long-term environmental change in the country’s northern regions. According to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), glaciers in the Hindu Kush and Himalaya are now disappearing 65 percent faster compared to before. In the Himalayan region, about 10 to 30 meters are disappearing every year, and when it comes to the Hindu Kush, 5 to 10 meters. In the Karakoram region, 2 to 3 meters are melting less compared to the other two regions but still significantly. According to Ministry of Climate Change and Environmental Coordination, due to the climate change, 3044 glacial lakes have developed and out these 3044, 33 are pone hazardous glacial lake outburst.
Currently, deep learning is widely used to study glacial lakes, using models such as U-Net and DeepLab. These models are very effective in identifying lakes from satellite images. However, they face a few challenges. First, they require a lot of computing power, which makes them costly. Second, many of these regions do not have sufficient local data to train these models. Pakistan’s own hyperspectral satellite can help fill this gap.
Agriculture, meanwhile, remains the heart of Pakistan’s economy. It contributes about 24 percent to GDP and employs nearly half of the labor force, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Climate change is impacting agriculture in two ways: first, Pakistan faces losses every year due to floods, and second, in the long term, it is likely to affect overall crop yields.
According to the, the FAO’s geospatial floods submerged around 1.2 million hectares in Punjab, damaging rice, cotton, and sugarcane fields. It not only impacted farmers directly by destroying their crops but also raised inflation by 6 percent. This happened at a time when, according to the World Bank, the poverty rate in Pakistan had reached 25 percent.
Climate change will not stop here; one study warns that by 2040, rising temperatures could reduce overall agricultural output by 8–10 percent, while another study conducting crop growth simulations projects a 6 percent drop in wheat yield, which is the main staple for people in Pakistan. Apart from this, a 15–18 percent decline in basmati rice is expected, which is an important export commodity for Pakistan.
HS-1 will not prevent climate change, but it will make adaptation far smarter; it can monitor crop stress, detect pest infestations before they spread, and help farmers adjust irrigation precisely when and where it’s needed. And for an economy already under pressure, even a few percentage points of yield recovery can mean billions in saved imports—and renewed confidence in its rural backbone.
Another aspect which is impacting the economy indirectly and having a huge impact on the health security of Pakistani people is the degradation of air quality. According to the 2024 World Air Quality Report, Pakistan was the third most polluted country in the world with an average annual PM2.5 concentration of 73.7 μg/m373.7\ \mu g/m^{3}73.7 μg/m3. It is nearly 15 times the annual guideline set by the World Health Organization (WHO). As a result of this, in November 2024, in a single day, 900 people were hospitalized, and in one month, 1.9 million cases of respiratory illness were reported. For a country like Pakistan, where there is one doctor for 1,300 people and 0.62 beds per 100 people, this adds a huge burden. Air pollution is also showing long-term consequences.
According to the report of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, air pollution cuts average life expectancy by 3.8 years. This gets even worse in some industrial zones, where the number is seven years. According to the WHO, 256,000 people die each year due to toxic air. The World Bank counts 22,000 premature adult deaths in Pakistan due to pollution-related causes. Pakistan already knows many sources of air pollution through ground-based sensors or other sources. This new hyperspectral satellite can help make this data more effective and precise. Each pixel captured through this satellite contains a full spectral signature across hundreds of contiguous bands. It enables policymakers not only to see what is changing but also to understand the reason behind it. This is vital for quick policy intervention. Furthermore, in 2024, the Punjab government’s 10-year smog mitigation plan, HS-1 data could be used to monitor progress in real time rather than rely on seasonal estimates.
Furthermore, Pakistan can also utilize it to manage its forest resources in a better way, which are under immense stress due to multiple factors. Forests tell another part of the story. According to Global Forest Watch, between 2001 and 2024 Pakistan lost 95.3 sq km of forest cover—nearly 8 percent of its total. About 78 percent of that loss came from logging, followed by wildfires, agriculture, and infrastructure expansion. Hyperspectral imaging can detect species-level deforestation, identify illegal logging hidden under canopy, and verify replantation efforts. In a world moving toward carbon credit systems, being able to prove what has grown and what has vanished gives Pakistan credibility and access to climate finance it often lacks.
With mitigating challenges, it can also Pakistan in exploring a new path economic opportunities. On October 17, Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated the upgraded Geoscience Advanced Research Laboratories (GARL) of the Geological Survey of Pakistan (GSP). The upgraded labs now produce analytical data compliant with international standards such as JORC and NI 43-101, helping mining companies perform accurate reserve estimations and attract global investment.
Pakistan is believed to hold untapped mineral reserves worth around $6 trillion — copper, gold, lithium, coal, rock salt, and iron ore — yet mining contributes only about 3.2 percent to the GDP. Mineral exports account for less than 0.1 percent of global trade. In September 2025, Pakistan also signed a $500 million deal with a U.S. firm for critical minerals. The Army Chief recently said at the Pakistan Military Academy, “The treasures hidden beneath our land for decades have started to surface as a silver lining for our bright future.” It is here that HS-1 becomes more than a satellite. Hyperspectral mapping helps detect mineral distributions and alteration zones invisible to the naked eye. Combined with GARL’s new standards, it can turn geological potential into real economic value, giving investors the kind of data they trust. It can also help Pakistan in achieving independence in exploration of critical minerals without being dependent on any other country.
A satellite cannot help in achieving any of these if its data is not processed properly. All of this becomes possible because computing itself has become cheaper. Over the past decade, the cost per TFLOP for GPUs has fallen by more than 90 percent since 2012. Performance per dollar roughly doubles every 2.3 years. What once required huge data centers can now be done with affordable cloud services or even portable devices. A Google Cloud TPU v3 chip with 420 teraflops costs about $8.50 per hour, while NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano or Xavier NX—priced between $150 and $400—can run field-level hyperspectral analysis. Small AI models can be developed locally, linking HS-1’s data with village labs, agricultural departments, or provincial agencies. In this sense, Pakistan’s new satellite is not just in orbit—it is entering classrooms, fields, and research centers through cheaper compute.
All the problems mentioned above have multiple layers that cannot be solved simply by launching a satellite. However, Pakistan’s own satellite can provide specific data that can be used to develop a decision-making mechanism or train AI models to help the government foresee future trends. This capability is vital in a world where climate change and the unpredictability of nature make long-term planning increasingly difficult.
Author: Zohaib Altaf, Associate Director Research, Center for International Strategic Studies AJK.
