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Death Valley in California is just as photogenic when viewed from space
as it is from the ground – though the pioneers who gave the place its name
were less concerned with the beauty of their surroundings than the heat
and the lack of water. The radar image comes from last month’s flight of
NASA’s shuttle Endeavour.

Two radar instruments mounted in the cargo bay took pictures of about
12 per cent of the Earth’s surface during the shuttle’s two-week flight.
One of the instruments, NASA’s huge Spaceborne Imaging Radar, can take several
radar images simultaneously at different wavelengths. By allocating a colour
to a particular wavelength the instrument circumvents one of radar’s weaknesses
– that it is colour blind.

By combining the radar images with existing topographical information
the scientists have been able to create 3-D landscapes and provide from
space a worm’s eye view even of the lowest-lying land in the western hemisphere.