The satellites were used by Foreign Affairs in the response to the lethal landslides in Papua New Guinea. Photo: Mohamud Omer / International Organization for Migration via AP
New Zealand has been granted official access to a global network of satellites to support rapid disaster responses.
NEMA - the national emergency management agency - received "user status" from the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters earlier this month.
The satellites have already been used by Foreign Affairs in the response to the lethal landslides in Papua New Guinea in May.
The charter is a venture between 17 space agencies, and is run currently out of Canada and Germany.
Ottowa recently allocated more than billion dollars to its space agency.
New Zealand already got charter satellite help twice at home in 2011, following the Christchurch quake and the Rena oil spill.
The charter wrote to NEMA on 3 July with a user guide "in case your organisation requests a charter activation for support to a major disaster in your country", an OIA response showed.
Joining the charter group was a key objective following Cyclone Gabrielle, NEMA said.
"Activating [it]... is crucial for accessing freely available data during immediate response periods."
