At the time of writing, the ASTER stereo capability is somewhat overshadowed by the impending release of the
global Shuttle radar topography mission (SRTM) dataset, and as SRTM covers the most of the Earth’s landmass (near
complete coverage between latitudes 60j north and south), and is not affected by cloud cover or volcanic plume, one
might ask: why bother with ASTER stereo capabilities?