I went out to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Air and Space museum
annex at Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia
last weekend and was pleasantly surprised to see one of the SRTM
payloads hanging off the ceiling. The Shuttle Radar Telemetry
Mapping program helped produce a significantly more accurate and
detailed world-wide digital elevation model (DEM, DTM) in the
early part of this decade and was a great leap forward for
shaded relief generation. If you make the trip, you’ll find the
SRTM between 22 and 23 on the map below in the “space shuttle”
hanger. The map does a good job of indicating what altitude
different aircraft can be found in the hanger. Here’s a photo:
|Cannister/Mast, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Payload
(republished from the Smithsonian) |In 2000, the Shuttle
Endeavor carried the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM)
payload into orbit. Shuttle astronauts used the payload,
manufactured by the AEC-Able Engineering Co., to map in high
detail and three dimensions more than 70 p