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In the News: Bing's Global Ortho Project Maps United States
The entire United States is now available as an interactive, high-resolution aerial map thanks to Microsoft's search engine company Bing Maps.
Bing's Global Ortho Project is a way to map the entire worldwith the latest technology. Previous problems that spurred the need for the project included images that looked patchy and differing resolutions within the same area on a map. Now the same high-resolution look is available in a consistent layout.
The company teamed up with Vexcel imaging, another Microsoft company, and used their newest UltraCam Eagle aerial camera to collect every square inch of the U.S. and part of Western Europe for the Global Ortho project. Images were collected by the Bing Imagery Technologies Team in Boulder, CO and published to the Bing website.
 Speed for the project has impressed many people. The GO project's two-year accomplishment would have taken the USGS's National Agriculture Imagery program an estimated more than four decades to do.
Data collection for the project has been gargantuan. The amount of pixels-per-inch collected is estimated to make it to the moon 104 times.
The Map Imagery team was the last stop for the pilots who scanned the skies and captured a picture of the Bing logo written on the top of the Bing Maps building. Other landmarks include the space shuttle Atlantis before its departure as well as the Pueblo Bonito ruins at Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Lincoln Memorial and the Grand Canyon.
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