The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) was flown aboard the space shuttle Endeavour February 11-22, 2000. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) participated in an international project to acquire radar data which were used to create the first near-global set of land elevations. Endeavour orbited Earth 16 times each day during the 11-day mission, completing 176 orbits. SRTM successfully collected radar data over 80% of the Earth's land surface between 60° north and 56° south latitude with data points posted every 1 arc-second (approximately 30 meters). SRTM 1 Arc-Second Global elevation data offer worldwide coverage of void filled data at a resolution of 1 arc-second (30 meters) and provide open distribution of this high-resolution global data set. Some tiles may still contain voids. Users should check the coverage map in EarthExplorer to verify if their area of interest is available. Please note that tiles above 50° north and below 50° south latitude are sampled at a resolution of 2 arc-second by 1 arc-second.

The ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (ASTER GDEM) is a joint product developed and made available to the public by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) of Japan and the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It is generated from data collected from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), a spaceborne earth observing optical instrument. The ASTER GDEM is the only DEM that covers the entire land surface of the Earth at high resolution. Version 2 of the ASTER GDEM is developed, employing an advanced algorithm to improve GDEM resolution and elevation accuracy and reprocessing a total of 1.5 million scene data including additional 250,000 scenes acquired after the previous release. Accuracy of this latest version is validated by the collaborate effort between Japan and the United States, which shows significant improvements over Version 1

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) releases the global digital surface model (DSM) dataset with a horizontal resolution of approx. 30-meter mesh (1 arcsec) free of charge. The dataset has been compiled with images acquired by the Advanced Land Observing Satellite "DAICHI" (ALOS). The dataset is published based on the DSM dataset (5-meter mesh version) of the "World 3D Topographic Data", which is the most precise global-scale elevation data at this time, and its elevation precision is also at a world-leading level as a 30-meter mesh version. This dataset is expected to be useful for scientific research, education, as well as the private service sector that uses geospatial information. April 2016: Version 1 covering Japan and a part of individual continent released (Total 7,278 tiles) Next release expanding area is planned around end of May 2016.