A VIEW FROM NASA'S SHUTTLE ANTELOPE VALLEY MAPPED BY RADAR.

Byline: Daily News

PALMDALE - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration released a computer-animated 3-D flyover of the Antelope Valley, created with detailed mapping data from NASA's recent shuttle radar topography mission.

The video, released on NASA's satellite television channel, zooms along a 90-mile stretch of the San Andreas Fault to the intersection with the Garlock Fault near Gorman - which NASA called one of the region's greatest quake hazards.

Stills from the video are available at www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/srtm.

The February flight of the space shuttle carried a Jet Propulsion Laboratory experiment that used a 200-foot antenna boom - the largest structure ever extended from the shuttle - to gather mapping data over almost 80 percent of Earth's surface.

In what has been called ``the most successful science shuttle mission ever,'' the huge amount of data returned from the shuttle radar topography mission represents a giant leap forward in knowledge of Earth's surface, JPL officials said.

The 3-D images of Earth's surface will be used for a wide variety of ecological, geological, meteorological, sociological and civil engineering projects, they said.

Similar imagery of the entire Earth will be available in coming months, JPL officials said.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) A three-dimensional image from the space shuttle looks northwest up Pine Canyon Road, which runs along the San Andreas Fault, west of Lake Hughes. The San Gabriel Mountains are on the left side of the photo and the Tehachapi Mountains on the upper right. NASA's detailed topographic maps will be used by geologists studying fault dynamics.

(2 -- color) Quail Lake in the far western Antelope Valley shows as an irregular dark patch, with the Golden State Freeway visible as a curving gray line across the upper left and the San Andreas Fault beside Pine Canyon Road down the center.

NASA