NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Global 3 arc second V003

The Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) is responsible for the archive and distribution of NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) SRTM, which includes the global 3 arc second (~90 meter) product. The 3 arc second data was derived from the 1 arc second using averaging methods. (See Figure 3 in the User Guide) The NASA SRTM data sets result from a collaborative effort by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA - previously known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, or NIMA), as well as the participation of the German and Italian space agencies. This collaboration aims to generate a near-global digital elevation model (DEM) of Earth using radar interferometry. SRTM was the primary (and virtually only) payload on the STS-99 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, which launched February 11, 2000 and flew for 11 days.The SRTM swaths extended from ~30 degrees off-nadir to ~58 degrees off-nadir from an altitude of 233 kilometers (km), creating swaths ~225 km wide, and consisted of all land between 60° N and 56° S latitude to account for 80% of Earth's total landmass. The SRTMGL3 data were generated from SRTM1GL data that fall within that tile. These elevation files use the extension ".HGT", meaning height (such as N37W105.SRTMGL3.HGT). The primary goal of creating the Version 3 data was to eliminate gaps, or voids, that were present in earlier versions of SRTM data. In areas with limited data, existing topographical data were used to supplement the SRTM data to fill the voids. The source of each elevation pixel is identified in the corresponding SRTMGL3N product (such as N37W105.SRTMGL3N.NUM).The global 3 arc second SRTM product is also available in NetCDF4 format as the SRTMGL3_NC dataset with the source of each elevation pixel in the corresponding SRTMGL3_NUMNC product.Known Issues Known issues in the NASA SRTM are described in the following publication: * Rodriguez, E., C. S. Morris, and J. E. Belz (2006), A global assessment of the SRTM performance, Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens., 72, 249–260. https://doi.org/10.14358/PERS.72.3.249Improvements/Changes from Previous Version Voids in the Version 3.0 products were filled with ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) Version 2.0, the Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010 (GMTED2010), and the National Elevation Dataset (NED).

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated August 6, 2025, 23:04 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 18:00 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id b014a1bd-ba6f-44b3-9bae-9db914dc00a8
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/MEaSUREs/SRTM/SRTMGL3.003
modified 2025-08-06T19:35:41Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher LP DAAC;NASA/JPL/SRTM
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash db564ca351dccd0fd8eb28fa0dd34b57cddc80c6eda4102924f85b63c73bc221
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN",[{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":60,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-56}]]
theme {"Earth Science"}