Every minute can make a difference after a earthquake. When a building collapses, finding people alive trapped between tons of concrete, steel and dirt becomes a race against time.
He “seismic double” that shook much of Venezuela on June 24, 2026 – and which so far left more than 2,000 deaths – once again showed that challenge. According to a preliminary NASA assessment released after the disaster, About 58,870 buildings were damaged or destroyeda figure that gives dimension to the magnitude of the search operation that is usually deployed after an event of this type.
For such devastating scenarios, there is already a technology capable of detecting tiny movements produced by a person’s heart and breathing. In this way, the device can find human activity several meters away from debris.
How NASA technology that detects people under rubble works
The system is called FINDER (Finding Individuals for Disaster Emergency Response) and was born from joint work between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the aforementioned space agency and the Department of Homeland Security of USA (DHS).
On May 7 2015 The final prototype was unveiled at the Virginia ONE Task Force training facility in Lorton, Virginia. Four years later, the X3 FINDER system was deployed to the Philippines to help find people buried under rubble following an earthquake in Davao City.
Its operation It is based on microwave radar that can pass through mountains of debris and detect movements imperceptible to the human eye.
It does not search for images or sounds. What it identifies are the microscopic movements that the body generates when breathing or when the heart beats.
«When the heart beats, the body moves one millimeter,» he explained. Jim Luxresponsible for the FINDER prototype project, in statements to NASA Spinoff. «Since the debris does not move, we can isolate those movements. Then, we analyze whether the movement reflects both heartbeats and breathing,» he clarified.
The particular characteristic of the device developed by NASA
One of the greatest advantages of the system is its ability to differentiate different types of movement.
FINDER –that It is the size of a suitcase– can distinguish movements produced by people from those generated by machinery used during rescue operations.
Also is it possible to differentiate between people and animalsan especially important feature in chaotic scenarios where trained dogs and heavy debris removal equipment are at work.
The limitations of the first prototype
As is the case with many technological innovationsthe first version of FINDER also had limitations.
He could not determine precisely how many people remained buried under the rubble. Additionally, it had difficulty passing through certain materials, such as solid metal walls.
«The NASA culture is trying to make everything perfect,» Jim Lux told the already prominent site. To which an official from the Department of Homeland Security responded: «They will want it to be perfect, but I prefer a solution that is 80% good, because during the years that we are trying to perfect it, there will be deaths.»
The blunt words continued: “If you give us something that isn’t quite perfect, we can save lives in the meantime and we can continue working on it later.”
From a NASA prototype to a tool for rescuers
After proving that the concept worked, NASA granted licenses to manufacture commercial versions of the system.
One of the companies chosen was SpecOps Group Inc.a company specialized in the development of tools for public security organizations and military forces.
With the accompaniment of JPL engineers, the company perfected the design and imagined new usage scenarios.
In addition to collapsed buildings after earthquakes, the technology could also be used to locate people buried by snow avalanches or other natural disasters.
For its part, the most recent versions such as MK4 Finder They also incorporate a camera system that automatically switches between conventional and infrared vision to facilitate operations both day and night, allowing vital signs to be detected from a safe distance for rescuers.
