Celebrate Earth Day with NASA's Terra Tools and Posters
To celebrate Earth Day (April 22) this year, NASA invites everyone to share views of Earth with the world — and to tack up artists' perspectives of our home planet on their walls.
The agency recently gathered several Earth Day posters on one handy website, allowing people to download artists' impressions of a boat among sea creatures, a person relaxing by a lake and a face artfully made up of plants, among other scenes.
If you're more interested in real-life images and data, check out NASA's Eyes on the Earth app, which shows where all of the agency's Earth-orbiting satellites are right now. [Earth from Space! NASA's Classic Photos]
Once inspired by such pictures, you can then share your data for Earth science, thanks to some other NASA tools.
Worldview allows anyone using a tablet, laptop or desktop to look at changing views of Earth's surface. You can zoom in to any area of the world and share a GIF showing raging wildfires, tropical storms or whatever else may be happening in that particular spot.
And the free GLOBE Observer smartphone app helps the public track the breeding sites and larvae of mosquitoes. The aim is to help prevent the spread of Zika and other diseases that mosquitoes transmit to humans, NASA officials said.
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NASA also is participating in Earth Day Houston, an event held Sunday (April 22) from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. CDT at Discovery Green, 1500 McKinney St. in Houston. NASA describes this as "a citywide event featuring displays, exhibits and talks on topics ranging from alternative energy to recycling methods." There will be virtual reality goggles showing the International Space Station (a vantage point from which astronauts and scientific instruments observe the Earth). And scientists will be on hand talking about the importance of Earth imagery to the environment, NASA officials said.
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Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., was a staff writer in the spaceflight channel between 2022 and 2024 specializing in Canadian space news. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years from 2012 to 2024. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House, leading world coverage about a lost-and-found space tomato on the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.