We are a planet-based species: With a few notable (astronaut) exceptions, everyone who has ever lived remained glued to our spinning Earth, which now houses 8.3 billion people.
That's the gravity of the situation. But we're also a world of floods, typhoons, earthquakes, heat and cold calamities, volcanic eruptions and even encounters with sun-caused auroras and bruises from incoming asteroids.
It's quite a world worth watching — and for decades that's what spacecraft have been doing. But what do they view and who's on the other end of the space-based telescopes capturing our daily doings, faults and all, down here on terra firma?
English (US)