NASA along with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan yesterday released the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM), a digital topographic map of the new earth that is claimed to be the most complete than ever before. This was conveyed by Woody Turner, ASTER program scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington.
GDEM is processed using a stereo-correlating 1.3 million scene ASTER optical image archives. Including 83 degrees north latitude and 83 degrees south latitude, which means that nearly 99% of the earth's surface covered by the GDEM with a level of accuracy of 30 meters, beating the SRTM dataset which only cover 80% of the Earth's surface with a level of accuracy of 90 meters.