A New Map Shows All Of The World's Plants
It is beautiful.
The boxy Proba-V — the "V" stands for "Vegetation" — is designed specifically for the purpose of capturing images of Earth's land cover and plant life. Measuring less than one cubic meter and weighing around 300 pounds, it is the smallest satellite in ESA's fleet.
However, it has extremely powerful equipment on board. It has a viewing range of 2225KM, enabling it "to revisit virtually all locations on Earth on a daily basis," according to the ESA's Proba-V mission website. For the next five years, the Proba-V will take daily images of Earth's plant life, letting scientists examine even the most gradual environmental changes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also recently released some gorgeous maps of plant life on Earth taken by the Suomi NPP satellite, which serve similar purposes.