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NASA have released a ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard their most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP.
This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed ‘Suomi NPP’ on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.