Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Return to search results
💡 Advanced Search Tip

Search by organization or tag to find related datasets

NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Global 1 arc second number V003

Published by LP DAAC;NASA/JPL/SRTM | National Aeronautics and Space Administration | Metadata Last Checked: September 14, 2025 | Last Modified: 2025-09-11
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](https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/competitive-programs/measures)) Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), which includes the global 1 arc second (~30 meter) number product. 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.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 global 1 arc second number product is also available in NetCDF4 format as the SRTMGL1_NUMNC dataset and can be used with the corresponding SRTMGL1_NC elevation 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 have been 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).

Complete Metadata

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov