NASA has released a breath-taking high-definition image of our fair planet from space. The 64-megapixel image was captured by the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. According to NASA, the image is a a composite that uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012.
This isn’t the first time NASA has released a high-resolution image of the Earth as seen from space. The first (and arguably most famous) was taken by Apollo 17 and is known as the Blue Marble photo. NASA has released several photos along the same vein since then, including Blue Marble 2002, which many will recognize as the oh-so-familiar iPhone lock image.