NASA’s Global Selfie project is attempting to show the relevance of America’s space organization in a time when budgets are shrinking, the space shuttle program was cancelled, and even the International Space Station will be be gone by 2024 (or earlier, depending on what the Russians do).
In a related report by The Inquisitr , an elephant selfie taken on a Florida beach is odd, but wait until you hear why the large creature was frolicking in the surf. Speaking of strange, a squirrel selfie was not so such a good idea since the furry little creature became scared by the camera’s flash and attacked a boy. The mother didn’t run to help but instead laughed and kept taking pictures of the squirrel’s attack on her son. Of course, the oddest space-based selfie would be if Pope Francis baptized aliens as he promised he would do if that event ever occurred.
For a space-based organization, NASA’s Global Selfie photos are actually rather down to Earth. Using photos uploaded to social media, NASA created a 3.2 gigapixel mosaic of around 36,000 selfies showing people from all over the world, including over 50,000 submissions from 113 countries or regions. The cool part about NASA’s Global Selfie is that they arranged the photos in such a way that it takes the appearance of the Earth itself. Zooming in on NASA’s GigaPan site , even individuals are visible.
Peg Luce, deputy director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, says they were not expecting so many people to apply to become part of NASA’s Global Selfie:
“We were overwhelmed to see people participate from so many countries. We’re very grateful that people took the time to celebrate our home planet together, and we look forward to everyone doing their part to be good stewards of our precious Earth.”
NASA of course is using this selfie to promote their other work, which includes the agency having “17 Earth-observing missions orbiting our home planet right now – and several more launching this year – [to study] Earth’s atmosphere, land and oceans in all their complexity.”
Still, there are several space-based selfies that are just as interesting as the NASA Global Selfie project. For example, here is an Earth selfie taken from Mars, which required a lot more effort and cost a significant amount of money in order to capture:
Personally, I’ve always found this astronaut selfie to be one of the best selfies in the world:
Which NASA Global Selfie do you prefer?