Slideshow: Stamps look down on our planet

Click through imagery of our planet as seen from above in the U.S. Postal Service's "Earthscapes" stamp set.

Launch slideshow

The only problem with putting out a set of stamps that celebrate America's landscapes, as seen from above, is that the postage-stamp size hardly does justice to the aerial vistas. That's why we're giving you the "Earthscapes" imagery in slideshow form.

The 15-stamp set, which features pictures from aerial photographers and Earth-orbiting satellites, is available starting today from the U.S. Postal Service. The "Forever" stamps had their official unveiling at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"Once you've seen the world from above, you never look at it quite the same way again," Joseph Corbett, the Postal Service's chief financial officer and executive vice president, was quoted as saying in a NASA news release about the kickoff. "That's why the Postal Service is proud to offer these Earthscapes stamps, which invite us to take a bird's-eye view of the land we all share."

Two of the images are from the Landsat 7 satellite, and one comes from GeoEye's Ikonos satellite. The other 12 were taken by aerial photographers. One photographer, 81-year-old Jim Wark, took five of the photos, showing Utah's Castle Butte, a railroad roundhouse in Pennsylvania, a barge operation in Houston, a skyscraper in Manhattan and a geothermal spring in Yellowstone.

Wark spends hours in his plane looking for great shots. "I'm looking for the pictures that the other guy doesn't have," Shutterbug magazine quoted Wark as saying.

The Landsat images serve as a fitting way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first Landsat launch. "NASA has been at the forefront of looking at Earth from the unique vantage point in space," Chris Scolese, director of Goddard Space Flight Center, said at today's ceremony. In case you're not content with just 15 pictures, here are more long-range views of Earth worth clicking through:

• Slideshow: Earth as art
• More 'Earth as art' from Landsat
• See the world from the space station
• Peace over Earth: 2011 holiday calendar

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This concept art for a 2015 stamp celebrates NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto.

The next three years just might be prime time for poor little Pluto, thanks to NASA's New Horizons mission — and if the leaders of that mission are successful, a brand-new Pluto postage stamp will be part of the celebration. But they need your help.

Today marks the start of an online petition campaign at Change.org, calling for the creation of a stamp commemorating the $700 million mission and its 2015 Pluto flyby. It would mark only the second time the dwarf planet has appeared on a U.S. postage stamp. The first time was in 1991, when a 29-cent stamp labeled Pluto as "Not Yet Explored."

Back then, some planetary scientists saw that stamp as a challenge — and that gave an early boost to the efforts that eventually led to New Horizons' launch in 2006. The mission's principal investigator, Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, even included one of the old stamps as a pint-sized payload on the spacecraft. Now the postal connection is coming full circle, just in time to render that "Not Yet Explored" label obsolete.

"We're asking people to sign the petition because the post office considers not just the merits of a new stamp proposal, but also whether it is supported by a significant number of people," Stern said in today's kickoff announcement. "This is a chance for us all to celebrate what American space exploration can achieve through hard work, technical excellence, the spirit of scientific inquiry and the uniquely human drive to explore."

USPS

The 1991 stamp was part of a solar-system set.

The petition, along with the formal stamp proposal, would be sent to the U.S. Postal Service's Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, which sifts through thousands of suggestions and recommends which subjects should be transformed into commemorative stamps. Last year, for example, one set of stamps paid tribute to Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard's history-making flight in 1961, as well as the Messenger mission to Mercury.

It takes about three years to move from the submission of a proposal to the issuance of a new stamp — which is why Stern and his colleagues are making a big push now for a stamp that would be unveiled in 2015. The more signatures they can get, the better the chances of winning the approval of the committee and the postmaster general.

"If we get 10,000 signatures, we'll get a stamp — that's the impression I get," Stern told me. "But we're aiming for 100,000."

Stern said he'd like to turn in the signatures as well as the stamp proposal during the week of March 13, which marks the 82nd anniversary of the announcement of Pluto's discovery. That's not entirely out of the question, even though the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006. After all, how many other celestial bodies have been the subject of letter-writing campaigns, legislative action, street protests and petitions by planetary scientists?

Dan Durda, an artist and space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute whose works appear on the New Horizons website and in many other places (including my book, "The Case for Pluto"), has drawn up a concept for the Pluto stamp — but if the stamp proposal is approved, the stamp's design may well be out of his hands.

"Stamp designing is an unusual art form requiring exacting skill in portraying a subject within very small dimensions," the Postal Service says. "Due to the demands of stamp design and reproduction requirements, it is our policy not to review nor accept unsolicited artwork."

The design isn't uppermost in Stern's mind right now. "You know, I'm sure it will turn out fine," he told me. "Our goal is to commemorate the historic nature of the mission and celebrate U.S. leadership in space exploration. And involve the public."

That's where you come in.

"Sign the petition, and mention it on Facebook," Stern said. "Let's see how high we can drive the numbers for Pluto and for space exploration."

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.