A technology originally designed to search for water on Mars is now helping Mexico recover millions of liters lost through leaks and theft.
Developed in Israel, the Asterra Recover system uses L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites orbiting more than 600 kilometers above Earth to detect underground moisture invisible to the eye.
— INTEGRORED LATAM (@ISuolet) January 7, 2026
Puebla-based Integrored, which has exclusive rights to operate the system in Mexico, gets its information from a pair of Earth-observation satellites, one built and operated by Japan and the other by Argentina. Each circles the Earth in low orbit and passes over Mexico once every 15 days.
Using data verified with artificial intelligence, the firm can pinpoint water loss within a 100-meter range.
“What the satellite does is give us points of humidity, where potable water is visible,” Integrored CEO Carolina Villacís Espinoza told the newspaper Excélsior. “When we find humidity, it’s due to many things, not only water leaks, but also theft and waste.”
Experts estimate between 60% and 70% of Mexico’s drinking water disappears before reaching taps because of aged infrastructure, clandestine connections or poor metering. In other words, only three to four of every 10 cubic meters of extracted water reaches the people.
In Irapuato, Guanajuato, the technology identified 793 hidden leaks and more than 2,000 illegal taps in three months, according to La Jornada.
The system now operates in cities including Puebla, Puebla; Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; Saltillo, Coahuila; and Salamanca, Celaya and Irapuato, Guanajuato.
Leaks repaired as a result have already generated about 25 million pesos (US $1.5 million) in recovered water, Milenio reported.
Once potential leaks are mapped, Integrored dispatches ground teams — most of them women — to confirm and repair them using geophones, sound sensors that detect vibrations in pipes. They also provide support to municipal, state and private water-operating agencies.
Villacís Espinoza said 95% of her staff are women because the company wants to involve women in a field dominated by men. She also said blind people help pinpoint the leaks, using a sharp sense of hearing to hear water running underground.
“The difference, when you don’t have Asterra, is that the range is immense; you don’t know where to start looking,” Villacís Espinoza said. “But when you have Asterra, they give you a 100-meter radius; and then we go to find the exact spot with the geophone, which gives you the sound of the water. Once we detect it, we’ll break through to repair the leak.”
Yet the project encounters resistance. Villacís Espinoza points out that field workers face threats from criminal groups who have tapped into water lines, as well as rejection from people who feel meters are in their homes so companies can steal their water.
She urges citizens to cooperate. “If there is no water tomorrow, it is not the operating agencies that will not have water,” she said. “It is all the citizens who will suffer.”
With reports from Excélsior, La Jornada and Milenio
