Following the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January, international agencies requested satellite data of the area from the International Charter on 'Space and Major Disasters'. The Charter, an international initiative aimed at providing satellite data free of charge to those affected by disasters anywhere in the world, immediately began re-tasking their satellites to get the data urgently needed.

Data are being collected by various satellites including ALOS (Japan), Spot-5 (CNES), WorldView and QuickBird (European Space Imaging - DigitalGlobe), RADARSAT-2 (Canada), HJ-1-A/B (Cina), ERS-2 and Envisat (ESA), and Cosmo-SkyMed (Italy).