PEER into every crack and crevice. Fourteen years ago, the space shuttle flew a mission to map our planet. Now the data is finally being released in full.
Previous versions of the Shuttle Radar Topography data set only covered the US in high resolution, the rest of the world was in lower resolution. The latest release covers nearly the whole planet in nine times more detail than before.
Robert Brakenridge, director of the Dartmouth Flood Observatory at the University of Colorado, says that even though the mission to collect the data ran in 2000, the elevation data it collected remains the gold standard in mapping. The map of the world's peaks and troughs is used by Google Earth, among many others.
"It's the most widely used data set, it's the one we trust," says Brakenridge. "It's been exceptionally valuable for many years, and now it's nine times more valuable."
Each pixel in the new data release covers 900 square metres of the planet. The old data had 8100 square metre pixels.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Shuttle map"
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