Image of Arctic sea ice on March 10, 2008 when the sea ice reached the annual maximum extent of 15.21 million square kilometers (5.87 million square miles). The 2008 minimum extent of 4.52 sq km (1.74 sq miles) is the second lowest extent recorded since 1979. This image of the Arctic was produced from sea ice observations collected by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) Instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, overlaid on the NASA Blue Marble Next Generation data. The image captures ice conditions at beginning of the melt season. Sea ice (white, image center) stretches across the Arctic Ocean from Greenland (top right) to Russia.