I just (virtually) adopted a piece of Earth, and so can you
NASA is celebrating Earth Day with pieces of Earth instead of cake.
But you don't have to wait until April 22 to get your own slice. The space agency is handing out planetary adoption certificates in the days leading up to the main event.
Through their "Adopt the Planet" campaign, anyone can virtually adopt a piece of Earth as seen from space. I put my name on the coordinates for 60.72° S, 121.92° W -- which was randomly assigned to me and is deep in the South Pacific Ocean, pretty much near Antarctica.
Once you've adopted a location, you can learn more about your speck of the world with data from NASA satellites, including everything from cloud height and sea surface temperature to humidity and chlorophyll levels.
You can take an even closer look at your adopted location through NASA's Worldview. The website shows all the layers of data and let's you get up close and personal with your new adopted section of the planet, though it gets a bit pixelated at a certain point. (Still, it's your slice, so you love it no matter how unfocused it gets.)
You can then take photos, share social posts, and print out pictures of your location -- just like any obsessed parent would do.
As of Wednesday morning, 64,000 locations were still up for adoption. So what are you waiting for?
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
