1,000 People Pose for a Delightful Group Photo Snapped From Space – CNET [CNET]

The European Space Agency fittingly used a satellite for a group portrait.

The pyramids, the Grand Canyon and about 1,000 employees of the European Space Agency — these are all things that can be seen from space. 

On Friday, ESA shared a captivating group photo snapped by an Earth-watching satellite located 435 miles (700 kilometers) up in orbit.

A Pleiades Neo satellite captured the image on Wednesday during an ESA gathering at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. It was during a “day of games and activities intended to welcome people back to working on site after the two-year COVID-19 pandemic.”

It took some coordination to pull off the massive portrait, which had to be timed for the satellite passing over. The employees gathered in the shape of the ESA logo on a rugby field and held up white pieces of paper of their heads. The letters were marked out ahead of time. A making-of video shows how everyone got into place. 

The people in the image represent a considerable chunk of the ESA workforce, which includes about 2,200 staff. The satellite view ups the ante for any organization that wants to shoot a novel group photo. Your move, NASA.