Today is April 22, 2025. Happy Earth Day! For those of you who may not be familiar with Earth Day, let me give you a little background on it. First launched in 1970 in the United States, Earth Day was born out of a growing awareness of environmental issues in the 1960s. These issues included oil spills, industrial waste, air and water pollution. The idea was credited to a former US senator and governor from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson. As an environmentalist, he was inspired by the energy of the anti-war movements and wanted to harness that same passion for environmental protection. He appointed a young activist named Denis Hayes to help scale events to elevate environmental consciousness nationwide. Hayes was key in mobilizing the movement among college students and local communities to take part. Fast forward to the present, Earth Day is an international movement that aims to raise awareness about environmental issues and promote actions to protect the planet. April has also organically grown into Earth Month, making environmental awareness a sustainable effort, instead of a single day event. You can read more about the history of Earth Day at earthday.org.

To celebrate Earth Day and help you stay curious about our beautiful planet, check out this web application developed by the NASA’s Landsat Communications & Public Engagement Team: Your Name in Landsat Interactive. The interactive application allows users to input their names (you can also enter words or phrases other than your name), which are then spelled out using satellite images of Earth features resembling the letters. These satellite images were sourced from Landsat’s extensive record, spanning more than 50 years. The Landsat series of Earth observing satellites are jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The project was launched as part of Camp Landsat 2024, aiming to engage the public with Landsat’s extensive Earth imagery. You can read more about its conceptualization in this article published by NASA.

Let me know how else you are celebrating Earth Day? For me, I am designing a spring container using flowers and plants that I sourced from local nurseries over the weekend. I will share more in a future post.