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Hello, Earth! Satellite Snaps Amazing 'Blue Marble' Photo

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A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on Jan. 4, 2012.
A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on Jan. 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed 'Suomi NPP' on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin. (Image credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring)

NASA's newest Earth-watching satellite has sent back a breathtaking image of our "Blue Marble" that offers a taste of the orbiting observatory's vast capabilities.

The satellite's new photo of Earth from space comes just a day after the spacecraft was given a new name: Suomi NPP, named for the late meteorologist Verner E. Suomi, a scientist hailed as the father of satellite meteorology.

The Suomi NPP satellite's new Earth portrait is actually a mosaic compiled from several images taken on multiple passes of the planet Jan. 4. It joins other spectacular images of our home planet, including the iconic one taken by the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972 — one of the most widely distributed images in history — and views taken by other space probes such as Voyagers 1 and 2.

Suomi NPP weighs about 4,500 pounds (2,041 kilograms) and orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 512 miles (824 kilometers). The satellite is expected to beam about 4 terabytes of data to Earth — about the equivalent of 800 DVDs — every day.

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LiveScience Staff
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