The primary objective of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission is to acquire a high-resolution topographic map of the Earth's land mass (between 60°N and 56°S) and to test new technologies for deployment of large rigid structures and measurement of their distortions to extremely high precision.

The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission represents a breakthrough in the science of remote-sensing and will produce topographic maps of Earth 30 times as precise as the best global maps in use today. The information will be used to attempt to produce one of the most comprehensive and accurate maps of Earth ever assembled.

A Comparison of Resolution Data

Data Statistics

Planned Data Takes	Approximately 1,000 (every time Endeavour is over land)
Data Acquisition	more than 80 hours
Data recording rate	180 Mbits/sec for C-band, 90 Mbits/sec for X-band
Total Raw Radar Data	9.8 Terabytes (15,000 CDs)
Data Tapes	300 high-density tapes (each tape records 30 min. of C-band, or 60 min. of X-band data)

In addition, this mission offers a number of applications for data products and science, including: geology, geophysics, earthquake research, volcano monitoring; hydrologic modeling; ecology; co-registration and terrain correction of remotely-acquired image data; atmospheric modeling; flood inundation modeling; urban planning; natural hazard consequence assessments; fire spread models; and transportation/infrastructure planning.

Civilian Applications

Enhanced ground collision avoidance systems for aircraft; civil engineering, land use planning, and disaster recovery efforts; and line-of-sight determination for communications, e.g., cellular telephones.

Military Applications

Flight simulators; logistical planning, air traffic management; missile and weapons guidance systems; and battlefield management, tactics.