In celebration of Earth Day on April 22, NASA has launched a clever online campaign that enables participants to "adopt" a small piece of the planet.
The virtual adoption, found at go.nasa.gov/adopt, allows people to assign their name to one of 64,000 randomly selected spots on Earth as seen from space.
Each location may seem small from this distance, but each parcel is 55 miles wide. As you can see below, I managed to snag a piece of desert smack dab in the middle of inner-Mongolia.
It looks positively delightful and I can't wait to visit.
And while we're celebrating Earth's beauty ...
Besides hooking the world up with some virtual real estate, NASA is also on the verge of treating us to a high-resolution livestream of the planet from space. For the first time, the space agency will partner with Amazon Web Services to deliver live 4K Ultra HD video from space. The 4K event will be available to the public here on April 26 and will usher in a new age of live, high-res video from the International Space Station and beyond.
For an example of what to expect from the livestream, check out this previously recorded 4K Ultra HD view of Earth taken from the space station: