There are more than 1,200 active satellites orbiting earth right now, taking pictures, relaying communications, broadcasting locations, spying on you, and even housing humans.
A database compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists allowed David Yanofsky and Tim Fernholz to produce a stunning visualisation.
Just stunning images, with a story – Change.
Watching a glacier in Columbia recede, or the systematic cultivation/de-forestation of the Amazon or even the growth of Melbourne is, at the very least fascinating.
From Time Magazine’s “Time Lapse” project:
Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by people interested in what’s going on at home. Rockets fly in one direction: up. Telescopes point in one direction: out. Of all the cosmic bodies studied in the long history of astronomy and space travel, the one that got the least attention was the one that ought to matter most to us—Earth.