NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission United States 1 arc second number

The SRTMUS1N collection was retired on November 20, 2014, when global SRTM data became available at a resolution of 1 arc second. The data for the United States are included in the SRTMGL1N dataset.

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) Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), which includes the United States 1 arc second (~30 meter) number product.

Ancillary one-byte (0 to 255) “NUM” (number) files were produced for NASA SRTM Version 3. These files have names corresponding to the elevation files, except with the extension “.NUM” (such as N37W105.NUM). The elevation files use the extension “.HGT”, meaning height (such as N37W105.HGT). The separate NUM file indicates the source of each DEM pixel; the number of ASTER scenes used (up to 100), if ASTER; and the number of SRTM data takes (up to 24), if SRTM. The NUM file for both 3 arc second products (whether sampled or averaged) references the 3 x 3 center pixel.

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 degrees N and 56 degrees S latitude to account for 80% of Earth’s total landmass.

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.72.3.249