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The German satellite is in excellent health and ready to team up with the TerraSAR-X satellite to create the most precise world maps ever made, BBC reports.

TanDEM-X's first images show the runways at Moscow's airport; a cubist-looking grid of forests and fields in Ukraine; and the difference between choppy and calm waters off Madagascar.

The spacecraft is flying over Earth at roughly 4 miles per second, and will join its partner satellite in a tight dance by this October.

The duo will bounce microwave pulses off Earth's surface and time the return signals, allowing them to map the entire land surface of the planet in extreme detail. TerraSAR-X has already mapped the surface within an accuracy of about 30 feet. The tandem satellites should be able to map the variation in height of the Earth's surface to within about six and a half feet.

This digital elevation information could enable military jets to fly ultra-low, or it could help relief workers spot damage wrought by natural disasters.

The satellites will orbit in a complicated dance that brings them within 700 feet of each other. They'll start making 3-D maps sometime in January, and it will take about three years to create a seamless map of the globe.

[BBC]

TanDEM-X will help create the most accurate 3D maps yet

Germany's TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement) successfully separated from its carrier rocket and was put into a polar orbit slightly inclined to the one it's sister satellite, TerraSAR-X. Together, the two will dance an intricate orbital tango as TanDEM-X flies a tight pattern around TerraSAR at an altitude of about 320 miles above the Earth. It's the first time two satellites will orbit in such a tight formation for such an extended period.

By bouncing microwaves pulses off the planet's surface and timing the return signals, the satellites' highly sensitive instruments will be able to map the entire land surface of the earth in extreme detail. TerraSAR-X alone has been able to map the surface to within an accuracy of about 30 feet, but with TanDEM-X at its side that accuracy should be pared down to within six-and-a-half feet.

A 3-D map that accurate will have vast military, research, civil, and commercial applications, ranging from tighter low-flying routes for strategic aircraft to better-organized search and rescue plans during earthquakes to more accurate city planning and land use assessments. Further, while other 3-D topographic maps have been piecemeal efforts, the TanDEM-X mission will be one single, cohesive map of the entire surface of the planet. With the satellites both in orbit, work now is focusing on upping the resolution so allow the rendering of detailed, massive images from the data collected from a single pass overhead.

[BBC]

What was once a kind of grainy, pixelated experience -- at least if you zoomed in really tight -- is now much more like the real deal. Building facades and architectural nuances are in focus, storefronts are legible, and landmarks can be explored in a far more realistic fashion than before. You could even argue that the ability to fly through cities, experiencing them from both ground level and from their upper stories and beyond, beats pounding the pavement yourself.

Currently, the 3-D experience is limited to a smattering of international cities -- New York, Cape Town, London, etc. -- but more 3-D-enabled locales are surely on the way, as Google's mission is, after all, to catalog everything in the world. You can take a spin around NYC below.

[PC Authority]