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Space

Space Shuttle Mission Images 68

Posted by Roblimo from the looking-down-on-everybody dept.
fred_the_slow writes, "The German Remote Sensing Data Center has posted images from the ongoing Shuttle Mission. The resolution is amazing, as the pictures on this link show." Beautiful stuff! Takes a while for the images to download, but they're worth waiting for.
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Space Shuttle Mission Images More

Space Shuttle Mission Images

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  • From the DASA web site [www.dasa.de], the parent company of Dornier Satellite Systems, which was the co-creator of the radar:

    "Up to now, the best global database has provided only every 1,000 meters a point with an accuracy of 100 meters in height. The SRTM sensors will provide every 30 meters a point surveyed with an accuracy of 6 meters in height. "

    Uwe Wolfgang Radu

  • Nice images, although I think the high resolution images at the NASA site are more impressive (there's a 20MB TIFF image of part of the Great Wall that's... whew!). But why on Earth did they make them in GIF format? I would have thought that the content of the images would have made JPEG a more appropriate format. Will Unisys come knocking now?

  • No, not the whole earth, just the interesting parts. :-)

    Really, the radar they're using to map the terrain can only image the areas the shuttles orbit carrys it over. From the launch site at KSC, they can't reach high inclination orbits. From the now mothballed facility at Vandeberg, they could have reached covered most of the earths surface.
  • What would be the point of mapping the earth in a hi-res fashion if there were CLOUDS in the way? :)
  • One difference between the GWoC and I196 is that the Great Wall sticks up in the air. Thus, it can cast a shadow which will enhance its visiblity from space. Though the dimensions of interstate highways and the great wall are roughly equivalent, interstate highways do not cast shadows. It may be possible that the GWoC is visible in early morning or late evening local time as it casts a shadow that's much larger than itself. Another thing, Interstates are not generally built along ridges, and the Great Wall of China does follow ridges. To compare a highway nestled in a valley with a wall mounted on a ridge is probably not right. Note that I'm not claiming that the GWoC is naked-eye visible, but I do think that it can be much more visible than interstate highways are from space.
  • Why would Slashdot want to do it at all?
    Caching websites takes disk space.
    Serving cached websites takes bandwidth.

    What does VA (Or whoever the fuck owns slashdot today) pay for? Disk space and bandwidth... Throw in the potential legal problems and the business decision becomes pretty clear. Plus someone would need to code up the proxy and integrate it with SLASH.

    What would they have to gain? Not a whole lot. Slashdot users expect some of the links to go down for awhile. The linked sites probably wouldnt pay for the service.

    -BW
  • It's an impressive concept, mapping the terrain of the Earth so exactly, but frankly I've generated better looking images with Vista Pro on my Amiga!

    Vista Pro was(is?) cool... it came with contour files for real places, like the Grand Canyon and Olympus Mons(!), and you could set up animated fly-bys and stuff... nice!

  • Uh oh (Score:1)

    by / ( 33804 )
    It's posted on a German site, so you'd better run it through Babelfish [altavista.com] first. Ah, that's much better.

    [And for those of you with no sense of humor, this is not a time to hit the moderation button. Even though the site's slashdotted and you have nothing better to do.]
  • Why is there a big fuzzy area just north of Las Vegas?
  • A friend of mine who works in a company called Planetary Visions [planetaryvisions.com] recently did a project called "Millenium classic: world atlas [dk.com]" which features some rather nice images [planetaryvisions.com] of the complete surface of the world (without clouds).

    The interesting thing was (if my memory of the brief talk we had at christmas wasn't fogged by too many substances) that the problem of removing the clouds from the images was not the clouds themselves (just take multiple exposures on different days and remove the lightest elements of each one above a certain threshold) but rather the shadows of the clouds which added all sorts of unexpected blotchiness to the resulting images and which therefore had to be removed pretty much manually (not having a nice easily identifiable colour to latch onto with a filter).

  • A friend of mine is involved in the project putting up reflectors in farm fields at known locations and heights to calibrate this system(using a $60,000 military survey GPS system). The resolution is amazing at 1 meter square, and a height resolution if 30cm!! (just under a foot)

    A big part of this project is for he military; you will never seen a large portion of the high resolution data as, in theory, it can be used by armies to find good encampment places, bluffs, etc. Currently USGS data surveys have a resolution of 1km x 1km with a height accuracy of around 5 meters, so this is a huge improvement.

    -Adam

    J. Willard Marriott
    Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.
  • Less than it cost to make Waterworld. Deal.
  • Sure, you can see the great wall of China from Space. Not an urban legend.

    I think the idea behind the urban legend is that the unaided eye can see it from orbit, which is not true. And if it were true, there would be many other things you could see, like highways in the US. The image you linked to, while interesting, is a radar image.

    With the right equipment, you can see people from space.

  • "e-Network" translation: electronic network
    Holy shlt!! Can't people come up with something that doesn't start with e or i!?!!?!
    This is getting mind-numbing! The marketing departments don't have a clue what they are naming, and PHBs buying the stuff don't know what they are buying. But if it says "e" in front of it, it must be "high-tech".
    Back to that commercial for ITT Technical Institute: "Have you ever worked with anything... high-tech?"
    Me: "You mean like a phone?"

  • A few days ago, I was reading about how all the info from the scanning would be easily in the multi-terabyte range, if not more. I think what would really kick ass would be a story on the logistics of the IT setup NASA is using. Just how big are the disk farms that nasa is using for this stuff? How do they handle the real-time broadcast and subsequent storage such a ridiculously large amount of data? I think stuff like that would make a cool story in itself.
  • Is it just me? or does the 3d image remind you of vista pro too? for those who don't know what it is, it was a cheesy 3d package for creating landscapes(a mountain, a valley, w/ a lake and whatnot) then flying through it.
  • Sure, you can see the great wall of China from Space. Not an urban legend. Check out this link [nasa.gov] from Nasa. There is a very detailed 20MB photo on there.

    Lots of other interesting photos are here [nasa.gov] .

  • I heard that the only thing you can see from space with the naked eye is the light at the top of the Luxor in Las Vegas. Yep thats what i heard.
  • and how much did they cost?
  • Just knowing that our cruise missiles are now targeted even more accurately. Take That, Saddam!!
  • nice, clear pictures, but I wonder how much postprocessing they actually did. The pictures would have looked a little more realistic if they actually showed the clouds...
  • JPG is a lossfull compression format. The whole point of these are accurate pictures.. Why then would you distrubute them by making them fuzzy with a JPG compression?
  • As I sit here trying to follow the link unsuccessfully, the following came to mind: the web site serving these pictures is not equipped to deal with the sort of traffic this seemingly innocent Slashdot article has generated, and, more than likely, the poor scientists there are getting absolutely nothing useful accomplished. The web server is probably using the same uplink as the rest of the machines at the site, and if I can't even get through to the web server, then I really doubt the scientists are able to get OUT to the internet. I wish the Slashdot community (and those people who select which articles to post) would think about this. These people are trying to conduct SCIENCE and they are providing these (very LARGE) images as a free service out of kindness. Our curiosity is no justification for crippling their operation for hours.

    I'll look at the pictures next week, after the mob has left. I'll be considerate.
  • Interesting false fact. You cannot see the great wall of China from Space. Think about it for a minute. A brick Wall probably no wider than 50 feet wide in some places, in the mountains of China, built thousands of years ago can be seen; but an interstate highway cannot be seen streatched out across the Grteat Plains of America? I think not. I heard that this was a joke that was started during the Mercury Program at NASA. Some that was orbiting Earth said, sarcastically, "I can see the Great Wall of China!" (or something to that effect) as they were over China. Somehow the general public found out about this and thought that it was true. Sorry, highly unprobable. I had a history teacher in High School who said that he had taught this for years until I brought this to his attention. Sorry Dr. Montford. Sorry, I don't have any source for these statements, just that I have heard them or read them somewhere. Peace Out... KKPsi
  • You're not the only one that get's bashed. I get bashed too! Mainly because of my how I horribly do spelling just by an itty bitty off. =P

  • images (Score:1)

    by jini ( 153221 )
    try the Nasa site (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/) for more up todate images .. Bahia and Nothern cape ( SA ) were done yesterday!! Nothing in europe yet.
  • Thank You Scott for Your comment, I happen to be one of these guys being responsible for the web-server, offering images from the recent shuttle mission. In fact we did not expect that amount of public interest, so we had to face some kind of attack, a constant load of 600.000 to 800.000 accessses/day. Most of them came from the U.S becauese NASA-JPL had a constant link to our web site. see our statistics at www.dfd.dlr.de/stats/srtm/ On Thursday we set up some mirror sites at JPL as well as in Germany, and we also moved our local server to a more powerful workstation, now things work definitely better. It is interesting to see that many of the comments posted by slashdot users reveal that they do not understand that this mission is a joint American-German cooperation, that the imagery on our server comes from the german-italian X-SAR instrument and that all data have been processed at the German Remote Sensing Data Center. As far as I know the JPL colleagus had some problem with the DOD with respect to posting their imagery to th web. But anyhow, our cooperation has been excellent thoughout the mission, and as everything worked so well, a follow-on mission will be most probable. Then also the remaining white spots in betwen +/- 60 degrees latitude can be filled. All data will be made available through our user interface http://eoweb.dlr.de/ as soon as they have been processed. Best wishes Hans-Joachim Lotz-Iwen
  • The expected amount of data from the German/Italian X-SAR is around 3 Terabyte. The american SIR-C system will deliver more than 6 Terabyte, because its swath width is 225 km instead of 50 km for the X-SAR. In the german archive we use a robot archive, that can handle these data automatically, access will be possible through our user interface http://eoweb.dlr.de/
  • Indeed it is posted on a German site, simply because the X-SAR is a German instrument. But as we know that some people have deficite in understandig foreign languages, we create our Web-pages both in German and English. So you should be able to understand without plugging your babelfish into the network.
  • The goal of the SRTM Mission is not to create data samples for silly games, it will provide a homogeneous global digital elevation model DEM with 30m pixel size and 6 m height resolution. The applications reach from mobile phone communication support to military and ecological applications. The advantage of the radar mapping is, that you get recent information on the real topography, including buildings and land cove, that You do not get from DEMs, derived from topographic maps.
  • Some technical infos from the operators of the German web-site: - since the launch of the shuttle mission on friday we had to manage more than 3 million user accesses, - as NASA-JPL links directly to our site, the load is distributed such, that the maximum access being recorded at local midnight MET, the best time for downloading i still between 7 and 8 a.m. MET. see: www.dfd.dlr.de/stats/srtm/ - we have agreed upon with NASA-JPL that they will mirror our complete SRTM-site next time, so that U.S. users do not have to use the transatlantic bottleneck (we know that our data traffic has significantly enhanced the data load by 30 Mb/s H.J. Lotz-Iwen DLR-DFD - the
  • Some infos from the german web site operators: - we had to suffer an unexpected interest of more than 3 million accesses to our SRTM webpages since friday - we have agreed upon with NASA-JPL, that they will mirror our pages, so U.S. users will not have to use the transatlantic bottleneck - indeed the data files are big, and so will be the video animations that follow now, but if You want quality you must accept that - all imagery will be kept on the server, so you can download it later (the mission ends next tuesday/wednesday) if you are upset with the recent status
  • The SRTM mission is a joint american/german mission, and the evaluation of the data is being performed in close co-operation of teams from both space agencies NASA and DLR. As a result, the presentation of results within the internet servers at JPL and DLR does not have the character of a competition. The acquisition plan of both instruments X-SAR and SIR-C on board is more or less fixed, and each agency has been prepared for processing pre-defined data takes. So, what is the sense of your message??
  • WELL it reall makes us feel better doesnt it. Means they wont be hitting as many civillian targets now (well maybe not on purpose my its not as if theyed even consider that ohh no!! hmm Umm didnt you know Saddam is actually an imposter hes an american actor) Who says that You dont learn anything while watching the x-files thats a joke that is
  • Note that Google (www.google.com [google.com]) caches pages in precisely this manner. Think of it as a proxy or a cache. Your ISP doesn't need to obtain written consent from every content provider on the 'Net in order to set up a proxy server. Why should this be any different? The content itself is left unmolested and they aren't making an effort to lay claim to it or keep the viewer from going to the original source.

    Though I do remember reading that Malda's chief concern with doing mirroring/caching of this sort of thing was copyright. But hey, if Google is doing it, why not Slashdot?
  • the primary purpose of doing radar imaging is so that you *can* see through clouds. Radar imaging was also used to map the surface of Venus, where all those clouds really get in the way.

    radar imaging can also show what's beneath the ground to a certain depth. IIRC, radar imaging was also used to discover the remnants of ancient roads and trade routes crossing the african and middle eastern deserts that had been buried for centuries.
  • when i downloaded those 7 MB hires images, they ended up being 1-3 MB TIFF images. someone's exaggerating, or else they ended up replacing the images with smaller ones or something.
  • not to sound like i'm complaining or anything.
    the big hires images are still great. onto my background they go!

    that's what i get for submitting before i preview...

  • I refuse to buy another Space Shuttle for personal use until they make the switch. Thanks for saying what was undoubtedly on all our minds. You are a courageous spokesperson for the indominatable Linux revolution. I salute you.

  • More like still recovering from the spammer attack. :/
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine [nmsu.edu].
  • Did you notice the vast quantity of *GREEN* in that image? I did. I suspect that on average an image of the USA from that perspective would be considerable more *grey*.

    We really should be paying some attention to this, folks.
  • Well, I realize that we're arguing "what you've read" vs. "what I've read", but IIRC you can see the Great Wall from space...sorta. Here's the deal: At certain times of the day, during certain parts of the year, the Great Wall throws a looong shadow (several hundred feet wide). Now if you are looking at the right place at the right time under immaculately clear skies, your eye can tell that there's something there. At this point a neat and well documented mind trick comes into play: The brain knows that there's supposed to be a wall down there, and it "fills in the gaps" to make it visible. It's not really a mental fabrication, because the mind is just extrapolating from the little bit of information it has. On the other hand, it's not really seeing it either, because it's just under the normal limit of perceptability.

    Supposedly this was confirmed by a shuttle crew a number of years ago in an impromptu experiment. Three astronauts who knew the exact location of the wall looked for it as they passed over, and two of them claim to have seen it. Two other astronauts, who didnt know the exact location of the wall, looked until the area went out of view and never saw a thing.

    So the correct answer to the question of whether or not the Great Wall is viewable from space is: "It depends on who you ask" :)
  • Another project going on (for the last time) is Earthkam (on space.com) [spacekids.com], Digital camera in the shuttle, schools take pictures. Not quite as cool as the radar imagery, but still really cool.

    Here is short promo from 3com Space Shuttle Images Of Earth To Reside On 3Com e-Network For Internet Age Education [3com.com]


  • It all depends on what altitude you are orbiting at. Mercury orbited at a much lower altitude than the current fleet of orbiters and more than likely, could see much more detail of the Earth's surface.

    What is really interesting is night. At low altitude, you can make out some of the major cities from all the light pollution. National Geographic had a section on this recently. It was pretty neat to see the US lit up like a Christmas tree while one could definitely tell where North Korea was because of the near complete absence of light.

    SP
  • Comparing the data from passes at different times will show the change in elevation as a nice contour map.

    Changes in elevation are closely related to the earth stresses that are released by earthquakes and vulcanism.

    Such a change-of-height map should make regions that have just had (or are about to have) earthquakes or volcanic eruptions stand out like a forest fire.
  • The Nasa Site [nasa.gov] says that the images are downloadable as 7Mb zip files.

    Let's see - 7Mb multiplied by a few thousand bored slashdotters equals how many gigabytes? Yeah, that should shut them down for a while!

  • I read that you can see the great wall of China. You can also see lots of other things. It all depends how high you are of course. With a visual resolution of 30 arcseconds, this means that it should be visible at somewhere in the region of 100 miles (so is this "in space" or not?). Or have I got my maths totally wrong.

  • Slashdot needs mirrors (Score:3)

    by Teman Clark-Lindh ( 3587 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2000 @08:06PM (#1269816) Homepage
    Seems like the last few "interesting link" posts that have been made, the site goes down in oh, 10 or 15 minutes. Slashdot should take all that big money they've been getting, and buy some big-ass to mirror all the pages they link to.

  • Re:hmmm (Score:3)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2000 @07:45PM (#1269817) Homepage
    The images are created from C-band and X-band radar signals, not from visible light or infrared. Water vapor will slightly attenuate the signals but not reflect them.

  • You can't see the wall of china from space (Score:3)

    by intmainvoid ( 109559 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2000 @07:00PM (#1269818)
    I read an interview last week with an astronaut who had taken photos from space - he said that the old story that you could see the wall of china from space is just a myth.

    Then again, i suppose the astronauts could just get together and makeup whatever story they wanted - it's not like we're going to go and check ourselves.

  • Long time to load, eh? (Score:5)

    by Seenhere ( 90736 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2000 @07:21PM (#1269819) Homepage
    No, Roblimo, those images only took a long time to load when you were the only one in the western hemisphere loading them.

    Now they are taking forever to load, since you posted the link to that poor unsuspecting site. Man, I wish you guys would just quit doing that without organizing some mirrors first.

    What the heck, here's another link (don't want to call it a mirror, since it's the original): http://www.nasa.gov/newsinfo/srtm_images.html [nasa.gov]

    --Seen

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