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Top Space Science Stories of 2000 Number 6 - The Most Detailed Map of Earth
posted: 30 June 2005
06:57 am
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2000_yearend_srtm NASAs got the whole world in its hands or at least 80 percent of it. In a fleeting nine days in February, NASAs space shuttle Endeavour used radar to map an incredible 46 million square miles (120 million square kilometers) of the Earths surface to create the complete world atlas of its kind. | 
The San Andreas Fault as captured by Endeavour
| The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission produced a data set that is now being stitched together to make the first-ever, near-global topographical map. The map or multitude of maps will miss almost nothing, covering nearly every hill, dale and everything else in between. Billed as a seamless snapshot of the worlds landmass or at least the portions where 95 percent of us live the resulting map will be a 30-fold improvement on any other similar map ever made. The main client for the mapping data will be the Dept. of Defense , which craves such information for strategic reasons. But civilians too should have a crack at the data, which can be used to place cell phone towers, safely guide aircraft over mountains and help urban planners in their work. | 
SRTM Perspective View with Landsat Overlay:
Mt. Pinos and San Joaquin Valley, California
| Although there are more accurate topographical maps of much of the worlds most populous regions, there are few, period, of many of its more remote areas, including its deserts, jungles and mountains. Furthermore, the shuttle radar system was able to penetrate the persistently thick cloud covers in some regions that have thwarted aerial mapping efforts over the last century. That, plus the ability to work at night, allowed the international STS 99 crew to map for almost the entire course of the 11-day mission.To create the map, NASA sent aloft two radar antennas, one nestled inside the shuttle payload bay, the other at the tip of a mammoth 200-foot (60-meter) mast extended into space once the mission was under way.The first, graphic results from the mapping portion of the mission, carried out over the course of 150 orbits, are already trickling out.-- Andrew Bridges, Pasadena Bureau Chief
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