As interest in photographs taken from space increases day by day, NASA has turned this interest into a personalized experience. A new website, using the huge archive of the “Landsat” satellite program, constructs users’ names or words of their choice, letter by letter, with rivers, mountains, forests and islands imaged by satellites.
50 YEARS OF ARCHIVE MEETS ART
The basis of the project is the Landsat program, which has been observing the Earth regularly since the 1970s and is the world’s longest-running satellite project. This program, carried out in partnership with NASA and USGS, has been following the change of our planet for half a century and now turns the natural curves of the earth into typographic tools.
The system scans and brings together natural landforms that resemble each letter of the alphabet (for example, a winding river that resembles the letter ‘S’ or a volcanic lake that resembles the letter ‘O’) in seconds.
HOW TO USE?
Access to NASA’s relevant Landsat page.
The desired name or word is typed into the “Enter a Name” box on the screen.
Within seconds, the system creates a special collage for that name from the images captured by Landsat satellites.
EVERY LETTER TELLS A STORY
The images created are more than just aesthetic squares, they also provide geographical information about where in the world each letter was taken. For example, the first letter of your name may come from glaciers in Canada, while the last letter may come from rock formations in the deserts of Australia.
This project, which also aims at education and awareness, aims to both increase children’s interest in geography and remind adults of how fascinating and artistic details our planet has.
