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from the still-no-sign-of-my-secret-lair dept.
500 terabytes of data transmitted over 6 years (January 2010 through December 2015) have been processed into a seamless 3-dimensional world map of unprecedented accuracy. According to the German Aerospace Center (DLR, or Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt),
[...] The project required two satellites to fly in close proximity, as close as 120 meters apart as the project team establish breakthroughs in the technology for maneuvering the satellites. The precision flight allowed the data to be processed into maps with elevation accuracy of 1 meter. The 500 terabytes grew to 2.6 petabytes in processing, but the computers used met the challenge.
The map, officially known as the TanDEM-X global elevation model, can serve as an invaluable resource to earth scientists studying the planet we call home. But it offers amazing images to the general public as well. The image at top shows a landmark in Mauritania visible from space. Other images at the DLR site depict the craters of the nuclear tests in the desert northwest of Las Vegas, chain of volcanoes, and videos depicting the Elephant Foot Glacier and the Namib-Naukluft National Park.
And, from the DLR link:
New Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) methods will enable diverse data for exploration of the global ecosystem to be provided within short periods of time. The Tandem-L successor mission could provide a current elevation image of Earth's entire landmass every eight days and thereby capture dynamic processes in a timely manner. This would also make it possible to contribute to the review of international climate and environmental agreements.
A 1m resolution 3D map of the Earth is extraordinary.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday October 13 2016, @02:24PM
But it offers amazing images to the general public [treehugger.com] as well.
The link on "general public" is something about Google Maps and doesn't seem to be directly related.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday October 13 2016, @04:33PM
I was unable to find publicly available data in the 5 minutes I searched. I think the data is publicly available with a service charge (100+ Euro). There is two free demos on the site for the Badlands National Park (USA) and Flinders Ranges (AUS). I'm not sure how many square km each covers, but they both are ~750MB each. I'm also not sure of the data format, it probably needs TanDEM software for viewing.
https://tandemx-science.dlr.de/ [tandemx-science.dlr.de]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @09:15PM
File size sounds reasonable. Badlands is about 9.8e8 sq meters. Their elevation is good to 1 meter, so if their cell size is roughly 1 sq meter, then if you take a byte per data element that work out to be 980 MB. Close enough, give-or-take.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2016, @05:30PM
Yeah, where can I find 3d imagery of my house?