THE world’s first selfie taken from space recently, thanks to the innovation of a Scottish entrepreneur

Spelfie is a ground-breaking new concept from a Glasgow-based company and also featured in a BBC documentary.

Saving Our Beautiful Bali is an insightful story about a young and inspirational environmental campaigner who lives on the island of Bali in Asia.

The programme follows teenager Isabel Wijsen who is on a mission to save Bali against plastic pollution and in June this year, the Balinese government worked with Isabel, her elder sister Melati and their youth movement, Bye Bye Plastic Bags to ban plastic bags on the entire island.

Isabel’s campaigning on the documentary culminates in an entire village of people spelling out ACT NOW on a polluted beach. Spelfie’s spectacular satellite image from space captures the moment and beams the message out to the world (attached).

Spelfie is completely free for users and is the first selfie app of its kind, using Airbus satellites to capture images on earth from space which can be posted and shared with friends and family. Once an event has been confirmed on the Spelfie app by partners and sponsors, the user then chooses the event they wish to attend. They then take a selfie and wait for their Spelfie to land from space on the same day.

Spelfie aims to disrupt a $144billion events marketing and sponsorship industry, allowing brands to increase revenues by driving event attendees, influencers and their traffic directly to the brands’ websites.

At the same time the attendees capture and share their memories at major events and uniquely, from space, using state of the art satellite technology. Yet as Saving Our Beautiful Bali demonstrated, Spelfie was created for more than simply to capture experiences at sporting events, musical concerts or large gatherings for that ‘I was there’ experience.

The company's CEO Chris Newlands said: “Spelfie is a movement of people who want to change the world and make a difference through social media and imagery. The power of a Spelfie can help raise awareness globally, encouraging others to join in and want to make a difference too just as Isabel did for the Bye Bye Plastic Bags movement in Bali."

Spelfie has benefited from its partnership with Airbus which uses optical cameras on Earth Observation satellites to take pictures with less than a metre in detail, which means that it is possible to see individual cars and trees.

Like a normal camera, it is not possible to see through clouds using optical satellite images and Airbus’ Vision-1 imagery of the ACT NOW Spelfie event was taken when the satellite passed over the beach location at just the right time.

Airbus has a fleet of satellites that captures images of many environmental challenges that society faces today including deforestation, natural disasters such as fires, floods and drought, and pollution monitoring.

A Scottish tech start-up, Spelfie has its headquarters in Glasgow, and is currently in talks with a number of global events and partners to feature through 2020 and beyond.

To watch the programme on the iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000bh4j/my-life-series-11-2-saving-our-beautiful-bali

For more information visit http://www.spelfie.com