This record has been obtained and continuously updated by sensors onboard a series of land-imaging satellites that began with the launch of Landsat 1 in 1972.
The ubiquity of broadband connections means large imaging files captured by geospatial satellites are easy to access by personal computers and mobile devices.
Over the past five decades it has led to the development of the Internet, lasers, global positioning satellites, magnetic resonance imaging, DNA sequencing, and hundreds of other technologies.