The BRICS TimesA powerful NASA-ISRO satellite called NISAR has captured jaw-dropping evidence Mexico City, home to over 22 million people, is sinking at nearly 9.5 inches every year, and the ground beneath it is collapsing faster than ever before.
A City Built on Water Now Swallowed by the Earth
Mexico City has a dangerous secret hiding beneath its streets. The sprawling megacity one of the largest urban centres on the planet sits directly on top of an ancient underground lake bed and a vast aquifer. That aquifer supplies nearly 60% of all drinking water for its 22 million residents. But decades of relentless pumping have pushed the city into a slow-motion collapse one that is now visible from space.
New imagery from the NISAR satellite a joint mission between NASA and India’s ISRO, launched in July 2025 has captured the ground beneath Mexico City moving at a terrifying pace. Between October 2025 and January 2026, during the city’s dry season, NISAR’s powerful radar tracked the earth shifting beneath the metropolis. The findings are stark parts of the city are sinking at roughly 0.8 inches every single month that adds up to more than 9.5 inches every year.
Why Mexico City Keeps Sinking Deeper
The root of the problem goes back over a century. When water gets pumped out of the ancient lakebed aquifer below, the soft clay soil above it compacts and collapses permanently. There is no bouncing back. As the city kept growing and developers kept building, the added weight of new infrastructure pushed the already fragile ground further down.
An engineer first flagged this crisis way back in 1925. By the 1950s, certain parts of the city were already sinking by a staggering 18 inches every year. The 1990s and 2000s saw some areas dropping as much as 14 inches annually cracking roads, fracturing underground water pipes, and bending railway lines in the famous Metro system. Over the last century alone, parts of Mexico City have lost as much as 30 feet of elevation. The worst-affected zones have sunk by up to 127 feet.
NASA’s NISAR Satellite A Game Changer in Tracking Sinking Cities
What makes this latest warning different is the technology behind it. NISAR or NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar is unlike anything that came before it. This satellite carries two radar systems at two different wavelengths a first of its kind and it can track ground movement every 12 days, rain or shine, day or night. Clouds and thick vegetation obstacles that cripple ordinary satellites do not slow it down.
Craig Ferguson, deputy project manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington, confirmed the accuracy of what the data revealed “Images like this confirm that NISAR’s measurements align with expectations.”
The satellite’s data pinpointed the most badly hit areas including the Benito Juarez International Airport, which sits squarely in one of the fastest-sinking zones. The iconic Angel of Independence monument on Paseo de la Reforma a 114-foot tower built in 1910 to mark Mexico’s independence centenary has already had 14 extra steps added to its base, just to keep up with the disappearing ground around it.
Fractured Roads, Broken Homes, and a Growing Water Crisis
The consequences are not just numbers on a chart they are playing out in people’s daily lives. In the Iztapalapa region, one of the hardest-hit neighbourhoods, researcher Dora Carreón-Freyre has spent 25 years documenting the damage firsthand. She described the destruction bluntly “The houses that are founded in [volcanic] rock are stable, but the houses in the middle between the rock and the lacustrine plain are already broken, most of them. In 2017, a taxi fell inside a fracture.”
The same overextraction of groundwater driving the sinking is also fuelling a dangerous water shortage. Mexico City already faces the looming threat of a “Day Zero” the point where taps simply stop running. Historic structures like the Metropolitan Cathedral now tilt visibly. Streets ripple with uneven surfaces. The city’s vast transit system bears the scars of shifting ground throughout its network.
What Comes Next and Why the World Should Pay Attention
Scientists are not just watching Mexico City they are using it as a test case for a global early warning system. David Bekaert, a project manager at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research and a key NISAR science team member, described the moment with urgency “Mexico City is a well-known hot spot when it comes to subsidence, and images like this are just the beginning for NISAR. We’re going to see an influx of new discoveries from all over the world.”
Researchers are now working to sharpen NISAR’s data down to building-level resolution so city planners and governments can act before bridges buckle and water mains burst. The same technology could soon monitor sinking coastal cities worldwide places already battling rising sea levels on top of sinking ground.
Mexico City’s story is a warning the rest of the world cannot afford to ignore.
Pratik Agrawal
Aditya Didwaniya
Akshay Didwaniya
