The Blue Marble project is being created with help of satillites and is constantly being updated. Along with satillites helping the Blue Marble project they are also helping with the World Wind program. The World Wind program is a three dementional virtural world. This program also contains spatial altitude measurements provieded by the the Shuttle Radar Mission of 2000. This was done by a radar system carried by the space shuttle Endeavor. With an altitude of 146 the system was operational. Having a length of 200 feet this was the artificial device ever to be carried into space, by that time.
The name comes from a picture of the Earth taken by astronauts aboard Apollo 17 on December 7, 1972. It shows the Earth as seen from Space, because of all of the oceans the earth appears mainly blue.
Blue Marble