| Abstract |
Culminating more than four years of processing data, NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) have completed Earth's most extensive global topographic map. The data, extensive enough to fill the U.S. Library of Congress, was gathered during the Space Shuttle Endeavour Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) in February 2000. The digital elevation maps encompass 80 percent of Earth's landmass. They reveal for the first time large, detailed swaths of Earth's topography previously obscured by persistent cloudiness. The data will benefit scientists, engineers, government agencies and the public with an ever-growing array of uses. The SRTM radar system mapped Earth from 56 degrees south to 60 degrees north of the equator. The resolution of the publicly available data is three arc-seconds (1/1,200th of a degree of latitude and longitude, about 295 feet, at Earth's equator). The mission is collaboration among NASA, NGA, the German and Italian space agencies. SRTM's role in space history was honored with a display of the mission's canister and mast antenna at the Smithsonian Institution's Udvar-Hazy Center, Chantilly, Va.
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