Our Planet Is Up For Adoption! NASA Announces The Initiative For Earth Day 2017

NASA is celebrating Earth Day this year by sectioning off 64,000 individual pieces of our planet to be adopted by supporters. The American space agency has invited people to adopt a piece of Earth and make it their own, in a virtual sense.

According to NASA’s Adopt the Planet page, each piece of Earth up for adoption is approximately 55 miles wide and is backed with science data collected by the space agency. The information includes the relative humidity, temperature, etc. of each of the sectioned pieces.

The space agency hopes to have every piece adopted by Earth Day, April 22 2017. Once a person adopts their piece of Earth, they can explore an interactive world map and print certificates of the same from any location on the planet. The certificate features NASA Earth science data collected for that location, which provides a view of the planet in a way never seen before. A person can also go on to share their adopted location socially on Facebook and Twitter.

The whole process is easy and really fun to do. To get started, a person just has to visit go.nasa.gov/adopt and put in their name -- and they are allotted a little piece of Earth, which is assigned at random. However, it should be noted that in no way does adopting the piece of Earth mean that a person actually owns it. NASA has stated that once all the 64,000 sectioned pieces are adopted, they will be starting from scratch so that everyone who wants to participate will be able to.

Apart from adopting Earth, a person can also go through the data of any place on the planet at NASA's Worldview. The website allows a person to view air quality measurements or images that highlight the amount of vegetation on land. One can also see the distance that air pollution or soot from volcanoes or fires has traveled from the land to the ocean.

Moreover, a person can also have a clearer understanding about the amount of sea ice present in the Antarctic or Arctic regions -- and various other such interesting and informative data and imageries, which are actually used by scientists to study the changing planet. However, for now, people should go ahead and adopt Earth. “Yours truly” did as well and was assigned a place in the Caribbean Sea near Jamaica.