Softpedia >News >Science >Science Blog
Softpedia Homepage   

Terra Satellite Completes Digital Topographic Map of Earth

The product is the most complete map of our planet ever produced

Oct 18, 2011 07:23 GMT  ·  By
Mount Whitney was confirmed to be the highest peak in the contiguous United States by the new Terra ASTER map
   Mount Whitney was confirmed to be the highest peak in the contiguous United States by the new Terra ASTER map

Officials at the American space agency released a new topographic map of the planet yesterday, October 17. NASA representatives say that this is the most complete digital topographic representation of our planet ever created. The data in the map came from the Terra satellite.

The images themselves were collected using the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument aboard the spacecraft. This tool is extremely well suited for producing global digital elevation models such as this one.

ASTER produced the new data by merging pairs of stereo images together. This enabled it to be extremely accurate in its measurements of global elevation. This particular map has been under development since June 2009, when NASA and METI released its first version.

“The ASTER global digital elevation model was already the most complete, consistent global topographic map in the world,” Space quotes Woody Turner, an ASTER program scientist, as saying.