Created From Nearly 1.3 Million Individual Photos
NASA and Japan released a new digital topographic map of Earth
Monday that covers more of our planet than ever before. The map was
produced with detailed measurements from NASA's Terra
spacecraft.
The new global digital elevation model of Earth was created from
nearly 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images collected by the
Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection
Radiometer, or ASTER, instrument aboard Terra. NASA and Japan's
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, known as METI, developed
the data set. It is available online to users everywhere at no
cost.
"This is the most complete, consistent global digital elevation
data yet made available to the world," said Woody Turner, ASTER
program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This unique
global set of data will serve users and researchers from a wide
array of disciplines that need elevation and terrain
information."
According to Mike Abrams, ASTER science team leader at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, the new topographic
information will be of value throughout the Earth sciences and has
many practical applications. "ASTER's accurate topographic data
will be used for engineering, energy exploration, conserving
natural resources, environmental management, public works design,
firefighting, recreation, geology and city planning, to name just a
few areas," Abrams said.
The ASTER data fill in many of the voids in previous maps, such
as in very steep terrains and in some deserts," said Michael
Kobrick, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission project scientist at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "NASA is working to combine the ASTER
data with that of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (example
below) and other sources to produce an even better global
topographic map."
NASA and METI are jointly contributing the ASTER topographic
data to the Group on Earth Observations, an international
partnership headquartered at the World Meteorological Organization
in Geneva, Switzerland, for use in its Global Earth Observation
System of Systems. This "system of systems" is a collaborative,
international effort to share and integrate Earth observation data
from many different instruments and systems to help monitor and
forecast global environmental changes.
NASA, METI and the U.S. Geological Survey validated the data,
with support from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
and other collaborators. The data will be distributed by NASA's
Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center at the U.S.
Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Data
Center in Sioux Falls, S.D., and by METI's Earth Remote Sensing
Data Analysis Center in Tokyo.
ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched on
Terra in December 1999. ASTER acquires images from the visible to
the thermal infrared wavelength region, with spatial resolutions
ranging from about 50 to 300 feet. A joint science team from the
U.S. and Japan validates and calibrates the instrument and data
products. The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.