The 2012 version of Nasa's 'Blue Marble' space images Nasa's 'Blue Marble' images of our world started in 1972, when Apollo astronauts took an image of our world from 28,000 miles away, looking like a blue marble in space. Since then, the space agency has used the term for spectacular hi-def images of our planet created from satellite imagery and often released once a year.
Blue Marble 2012 was taken by a hi-tech instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP.
This composite image uses a number of passes over the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012
It was created from imagery from Nasa's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP.
Suomi NPP is carrying five instruments on board. The biggest and most important  is The Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite or VIIRS, a scanning radiometer, which collects visible and infrared imagery and measurements of the land, atmosphere and oceans.
The satellite was renamed the late Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin who is recognized widely as the father of satellite meteorology.
Last year's image was taken by a space camera onboard the Nasa satellite Terra, which is orbiting 435miles above the Earth's surface.