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Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Data

Posted by michael on from the land-navigation-made-easy dept.

SubtleNuance writes: "This story on Canada.com describes the mission and results of NASA's recent flight to map Earth. The Shuttle trip has provided the most detailed 3D photos of Earth ever released." Some of the images are just astounding. Too bad most of the data isn't available yet.

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  1. They did better with Mars by alewando · · Score: 4, Offtopic

    It's odd that NASA is only now getting around to do with the Earth what they've been doing with Mars for years. (Follow that link for the pretty pictures, if nothing else.

    From 1998 to 1999, the Mars Global Surveyor made some 27 million topographical measurements of the red planet. With an average accuracy of 13 meters and sometimes as good as 2 meters. That's not much more than my height.

    Of course, having that precision on Earth would be more difficult with our thicker atmosphere and would raise profound privacy issues. On the other hand, government spy satellites probably routinely attain that precision without anyone's batting an eyelash. Maybe it's just as well that a civilian agency get in on the action too.