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NASA just released 2.95 million satellite images to the public — here are 21 of the best

Rebecca Harrington

2016-04-04T13:16:00Z

lena3 — Frozen tundra throughout the winter, the Lena River Delta in Russia thaws in spring, emptying into the Arctic Ocean. NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems/ASTER Science Team

An instrument called the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) has been taking pictures of Earth since it launched into space in 1999.

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In that time, it has photographed an incredible 99% of the planet's surface.

Although it's aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft, ASTER is a Japanese instrument and most of its data and images weren't free to the public — until now.

NASA announced on April 1 that ASTER's 2.95 million scenes of our planet are now ready to download and analyze for free.

With 16 years' worth of images, there are a lot to sort through.

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Here are our 21 favorites:

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Many ASTER images look like they were colored in by a little kid, including this one of the Andes Mountains. But that's because it has an infrared camera that can detect changes in surface temperatures, materials, and elevation.

andes mtns chile satellite

This shot of Manaus, Brazil, is the most popular image in the ASTER gallery.

manaus

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The volcanoes of the Galapagos Islands pushed them out of the Pacific Ocean.

galapagos islands

The 10-mile Oresund Bridge connects Sweden and Denmark. You can see the artificial island the countries constructed in the middle to make the trip.

oresund bridge

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North Korea experienced one of the country's worst droughts in 2015 (right). You can see how much less vegetation (in red) there is compared to 2002 (left).

north korea drought satellite images

Jacques Cousteau took his Calypso submarine into the Great Blue Hole in Belize, and now you can see the carbonate reef, too.

blueholefinal

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This triangular deposit of gravel, sand, and salt in China is called an alluvial fan.

fan chile

Venice, Italy's 400 bridges and 120 islands look a little more complicated from space.

venice lagoon

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Ecuadorean wetlands were transformed into shrimp farms from 1991 (top) to 2001 (bottom).

ecuador shrimp farms

The McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica may be the most Mars-like landscape we have on Earth.

dry valleys antarctica

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ASTER tracks the size of glaciers, like the Malaspina (below) in Alaska. The ice is in blue and vegetation is in yellow.

malaspina glacier alaska

This false-color image of the Anti-Atlas Mountains in Morocco shows limestone, sandstone, and gypsum rocks in yellow, orange, and green and granite in blue.

atlas swir

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The inset image shows the only ship that was using the 120-mile Suez Canal in Egypt at the time in May 2000.

suez box

An elaborate system of dikes, canals, dams, bridges, and locks hold back the North Sea in the Netherlands.

neth dikes

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This photo shows the Hayman forest fire, which burned more than 90,000 acres of Colorado in 2002.

colo fire

The perfectly circular intrusion of Kondyor Massif in Russia formed when molten magma crystallized underneath the earth and then rose to the surface. A stream flows out of its center.

kondyor view

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You can see the rings of the shoreline when Dagze Lake in Tibet was much larger. It has dried up over time.

dagze_co

Red-hot lava flows out of Mount Etna in Italy.

etna flow

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From space, the US-Mexico border is starkly defined by the landscape. Farms are colored in red, so Southern California (top half) stands out.

mexicali x

The Escondida mine in Chile's Atacama Desert has transformed the landscape to extract precious metals like gold, silver, and copper.

escon vnir

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Coastal winds form the tallest sand dunes in the world in Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia.

namib view

NASA Space

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