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1,000 People Pose for a Delightful Group Photo Snapped From Space

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

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Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
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Amanda Kooser
A satellite image shows around 1,000 people grouped together in the letters "ESA" against a green field as seen from an orbiting satellite.
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A satellite image shows around 1,000 people grouped together in the letters "ESA" against a green field as seen from an orbiting satellite.

There are about 1,000 ESA employees represented in a group photo taken by a satellite in June 2022.

 Airbus/ESA

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.

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esa-made-of-people-pillars

Here's a close-cropped version of the ESA group portrait taken from space.

 Airbus/ESA

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.