On the occasion of Earth Day, which will be held on April 22, NASA is offering those who wish to be able to adopt a small piece of our planet. This virtual adoption campaign aims to raise awareness about environmental protection.
Yes, NASA offers you the opportunity to « adopt » until April 22 your own piece of the Earth sectioned for the occasion into 64,000 individual segments. This NASA adoption process is here purely metaphorical, but invites us to realize that our planet desperately needs someone who can take care of it. Anyway, that’s the idea. For NASA, the Earth needs new responsible parents and that is why they are calling on you.
Our planet is indeed not spared. In the era of the Anthropocene (a geological chronology term proposed to characterize the epoch in Earth’s history that began when human activities had a significant global impact on the Earth’s ecosystem), our planet seems visibly out of breath, torn by CO2 emissions that threaten to send future generations into a climate unprecedented for almost half a billion years, by the fact that the Great Barrier Reef is today in the « terminal » phase or that most primate species on the planet are on the verge of extinction. Not to mention wild animals, elephants or rhinos and these are just a few examples among many others.
Faced with these events, NASA therefore plays on symbols. The US Space Agency invites you to drop your name here. She will then randomly assign you one of the 64,000 sectioned locations on Earth. After that, it’s up to you to take care of it. Once the « contract » is signed, you will receive your virtual adoption certificate on which your plot will be numbered and allocated (you have a good chance that it will be water, the Earth being 70% covered by oceans) . You will also be able to access a range of NASA data about your location such as temperature, local vegetation and atmospheric details.
For my part, I was assigned this small plot, to the east of the French Southern and Antarctic lands, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. And you ? Come register your name here and find out which piece of our planet you have just adopted!
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