Strange and beautiful images of the Earth stream from the computer screens and plotters that turn satellite signals into pictures.
Like alien astronomers looking at the world from the outside, scientists can now see our inside-out spaceship teeming with life, under the delicate film of the atmosphere.
The images from space show what previously could only be imagined - the forests breathing, the oceans blooming, the solid Earth heaving.
The ever-vigilant satellites deliver verdicts on man-made problems in the Amazon forest, the African Sahel and the Aral Sea while the night-time glow of cities signals to the Universe the wealth and poverty of Spaceship Earth.
Aided by the power of super-computers, the watch from space begins to grasp the intricacies of the planet's life-support system and its changing climate - in which more of human destiny is written in our clouds than in our stars.