NASA’s 'Your Name in Landsat' Lets You Spell Words With Real Satellite Images

NASA has launched a playful — and educational — web feature called 'Your Name in Landsat' that lets anyone type a name or word and see it spelled out using real satellite photos from the Landsat archive.

How the Tool Works

When you enter a word, the tool searches millions of Landsat scenes — collected continuously since 1972 through a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey — and assembles letter shapes from natural and human-made features that resemble alphabet characters. Rivers, coastlines, mountain ridges and desert patterns are among the landscapes the tool can use to form letters.

Screenshot from the NASA “Your Name in Landsat” tool page

What You Can Do

• Generate a custom image of your name or any word.
• See the exact geographic location of each letter on the globe.
• Export or share the composed image directly from the site.

Why It Matters

Beyond the novelty, the interactive is part of NASA's Landsat outreach mission to make Earth science more accessible. Landsat is the longest-running Earth observation program in history, and its imagery supports environmental monitoring, land-use planning and scientific research around the world.

"The Landsat archive contains millions of scenes that capture rivers, mountains, coastlines and deserts — features that sometimes naturally form letter-like shapes when viewed from space," NASA said, noting the tool highlights decades of Earth observation data in a fun, shareable way.

Try it: The interactive is available on NASA's Landsat outreach page, where you can create, locate and share your personalized Landsat word.