Spell Your Name with NASA’s Earthly Alphabet of Aerial Images

From rivers and oxbow lakes to crop-field patchworks and mineral sediments, Landsat has seen it all. A program of NASA and USGS, the satellite initiative has documented the Earth’s surface since 1972, making it the longest continuous record of our planet’s ever-evolving landscapes. And to mark Earth Day 2026, the organizations launched a playful way to interact with some of their findings collected over the past five-and-a-half decades—a name generator.

Using the tool is simple: type in your name, or any word, and Landsat returns it in the form of vertical snapshots of a wide range of terrain. Just like we see with composites of Mars, for instance, scientists have digitally enhanced some images to highlight specific features. Those used for “Your Name in Landsat” sport a wide array of hues, textures, and patterns that glimpse the diversity of our planet’s surface.

Eight vertical frames of the earth's surface captured from NASA's Landsat program with landforms that loosely resemble letters of the alphabet, arranged to spell "COLOSSAL" — “Colossal”

Landsat is an incredible resource that features time-lapses of changing land use over several decades. Even this playful name generator allows you to hover over individual images and learn the exact locations—down to the coordinates—and all of the program’s data is publicly accessible. For example, the “C” in “Colossal” above is a vertical view of a cloud-speckled Deception Island in Antarctica, and the “A” is the uniquely shaped Lake Mjøsa in Norway.

You might also enjoy Overview, a book that chronicles how the landscape has changed over time. Learn more about Landsat from NASA. (via PetaPixel)

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