With five NASA missions designed to gather critical data about planet Earth launching to space this year, the US space agency is marking this significant year with a social media campaign – promoting the #GlobalSelfie – as part of its new Earth Right Now initiative.
While NASA satellites constantly look at Earth from space, today – 22 April, Earth Day 2014 - the agency is looking to create an image of Earth from the ground up while also fostering a collection of portraits of the people of Earth.
To do this, the agency is asking people to step outside and take a picture of themselves wherever they are on Earth and then post it to social media using the hashtag #GlobalSelfie.
Once those pictures stream around the world, the individual pictures tagged #GlobalSelfie will be used to create a mosaic image of Earth - a new "Blue Marble" built bit by bit with the photos.
The Earth mosaic image itself and a video using the images will be put together and released in May.
For more information, see here.