“Tatooine” then and now from space: 40th anniversary of filming of Star Wars

A long time ago in a film location far far away, NASA’s Landsat satellite was watching as the rocky canyons of Tataouine and the vast salt lake of Chott El Djerid in Tunisia were visited by an up-and-coming film maker and his scrappy band of sci-fi pioneers. That barren but beautiful landscape would be seared into the memories of generations of fans. On the 40th anniversary of principal photography of the original Star Wars movie, its fun to see some of the filming locations from orbit, and how they now look today, as seen by satellites of the NASA Landsat constellation.

NASA Landsat images for Tataouine, Tunisia, in 1975 (Landsat 2 MSS) and 2016 (Landsat 8 OLI). The surrounding rocky canyons appear much the same as at the time of filming of the original Star Wars movie. The town (gray region is center of image) has grown in area by a factor of three in the last 40 years.

The real town of Tataouine in South-Eastern Tunisia inspired the name “Tatooine” of Luke Skywalkers’ home planet in the Star Wars universe, and appeared in five out of six of George Lucas’ Star Wars films (and heavily inspired the look of planet Jakku in Star Wars: The Force Awakens). Tataouine has roughly tripled in area since Lucas’ visit in the mid 70’s, and now has a population of around 95,000.

Relics of the filming still exist further west on the edge of the salt lake of Chott el Djerid, near the ancient oasis town of Tozeur. The iconic desert “igloo” of Luke’s home (the Lars homestead), rebuilt for the Star Wars prequel trilogy, can still be visited, along with the film set for “Mos Espa” from Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The town of Tozeur has tripled in size since the 1970’s, with substantial growth in the famous Tozeur date plantations clearly visible from space.

Luke’s Home (“Lars Homestead”) in the Chott El Djerid salt lake, Tunisia. (Photo Credit: Skylar Primm, Flickr: https://goo.gl/9mqfCW)

NASA Landsat 1 MSS observation of Chott El Djerid, Tunisia, 1979.

NASA Landsat 8 OLI observation of Chott El Djerid, Tunisia, 2016.

“Mos Espa” film set from Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, located north west of Tozeur, Tunisia. (Photo Credit: Bartek Kuzia, Flickr: https://goo.gl/wYEECK)

About the Imagery

The NASA/USGS Landsat satellite constellation has been observing the Earth since 1972, a unique resource for understanding our world and its many changes through time. Several generations of Landsat instruments have collected imagery across the electromagnetic spectrum, accumulating over 1 petabyte (8,000,000,000,000,000 bits) of data. The Landsat program continues to this day, producing imagery that monitors our natural environment and maps the large-scale patterns of human activity worldwide. The entire 40+ year archive of the Landsat imagery is hosted in Google Cloud as a public domain dataset.

Descartes Labs is a venture-backed start-up spun out of Los Alamos National Laboratory. We use Landsat and other public and commercial sources of satellite and aerial imagery to build a living map of the world, supporting agriculture, insurance, finance and policy makers worldwide.