NASA ‘Global Selfie’ Offers Stunning 3.2-Gigapixel View Of Earth [PHOTO]

If you thought the Ellen DeGeneres star-studded Oscar’s selfie couldn’t be topped, think again. NASA just went one step – or better yet, thousands of miles – further.

On Thursday, NASA released its “global selfie,” a photo mosaic made up of more than 36,000 individual images submitted by people from all over the world. Together, the photos form a 3.2-gigapixel view of Earth that, from far away, looks like a satellite image of Earth’s surface.

But zoom in, and you’ll see the faces of people from every corner of the globe.

In April, NASA asked people to send the space agency their selfies and to submit them via social media with the hashtag “globalselfie.”

The question NASA posed was, “Where are you on Earth right now?”

The finished product was constructed using 36,422 individual images that were taken on or around Earth Day. The space agency received submissions from every continent, including Antarctica.

"With the global selfie, NASA used crowd-sourced digital imagery to illustrate a different aspect of Earth than has been measured from satellites for decades: a mosaic of faces from around the globe," Peg Luce, deputy director of the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

"We were overwhelmed to see people participate from so many countries,” she said. “We're very grateful that people took the time to celebrate our home planet together, and we look forward to everyone doing their part to be good stewards of our precious Earth."

This year is an important one for NASA. The space agency is launching five missions in 2014, the first time in more than a decade.

Check out the global selfie, hosted by GigaPan, below, and zoom in to see the individual photos.